The following worksheets are included:
- Overall ranking – This is a bit of an eye chart, but includes data points for US News ranking, alumni giving rate, institution type, religious affiliation, setting, undergraduate enrollment, costs and room & board.
- Alphabetical – This lists all institutions in an alpha format for the ease of finding an institution you are seeking.
- Alumni Giving Rate – This ranks all institutions by giving rate.
- Public Alumni Giving Rate – This ranks all public institutions by giving rate.
- Setting Giving Rate – This ranks all institutions by giving rate against other institutions in a similar setting (rural, urban, suburban)
Just to be clear – In no way do I mean to endorse the USNWR rankings as the best way to measure the performance of a development operation or annual giving program. In fact, I would argue that chasing alumni participation figures will / can result in mismanaged resources and misguided objectives. A better goal is to increase your total number of donors. This provides incentive to find lost alumni, engage young alumni, etc. and report accurate numbers. Whereas chasing an alumni participation goal may result in manipulated results, an incentive to "lose" non-donor alumni, etc.
However, we all know that no matter how much we may preach against these rankings, they are a reality of the world we live, breathe and work in… so I find it is better to have the information at our fingertips when needed.
Regarding trends, I pulled together the average participation figures and analyzed how they have changed over the past five years. Some stats to note:
- The average of the top ten alumni giving percentages has dropped almost 9% in the last five years (-8.93%);
- The average of the top fifty alumni giving percentages has also dropped almost 9% in the last five years (-8.78%);
- However, the average of the top ten public institutions’ alumni giving percentages has dropped less than 2% in the last five years (-1.89%); and,
- Meanwhile, the average of the top fifty public institutions’ alumni giving percentages has dropped 4.21%
If you do find this helpful, I would appreciate it if you would “Like” my firm’s Facebook page @ http://fb.com/martsandlundy.
Link: 2012 Rankings
Link: 2011 Rankings
1 comment:
It would be great to see this for the Liberal Arts Colleges group as well, not just the research universities. Thanks for sharing, though, it is very interesting stuff!
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