Best of CASE District VI Award
 

Institution: Grinnell College

Title of entry: Grinnell's Alumni Engagement Score: 1.0 to 2.0

About this entry: Grinnell developed an alumni engagement score in 2018. Our goal with this initiative was to create a framework for measuring alumni engagement which synthesizes a variety of behaviors into a score that allows for broad interpretation and analysis regarding the effectiveness of our engagement strategies.

This program has allowed us to take cumulative engagement data and turn it into predictive models for driving quality engagement, better volunteer experiences, and ultimately, giving models that help build our development pipeline. Over years of data tracking, we have been able to learn a great deal regarding which engagement activities matter most and to see and respond to patterns in our alumni and donor cultivation.

The criteria was initially focused around broad data categories (e.g. did the alum attend an event last year?) because we wanted to avoid trying to make distinctions between the value of different engagement opportunities. The score was revised in 2023, informed by 5 years of experience. We found the score was too heavily weighted on the alum’s history, resulting in movement over time that was too slow. We also wanted to increase the granularity at the lower end of the score where the majority of our population is concentrated. The score was expanded to 44 points (11 in each category).

The score has been used in many ways: comparing engagement in different regional markets, helping determine the ROI of different types of event programming, targeting volunteer recruitment, and helping gift officers select prospects.