Higher education has been strained by COVID-19 in unprecedented ways. Institutional leaders are being forced to slash budgets across the board after a decade of historic investment in advancement. Chief advancement officers are being left with limited resources and sky-high expectations to fill the institutional budget shortfalls caused by the pandemic.
Exacerbating the situation, advancement leaders anticipate that COVID-19 will continue posing a challenge to fundraising across FY2021. They have expressed fear that expectations from presidents and boards are unrealistic given the economic realities facing many donors. Across the sector, advancement leaders are asking what goals are reasonable for them to set for their teams, and which metrics to track to help them get there amidst a new landscape.
Despite these hurdles, college and university advancement has been presented with an opportunity to strategically realign metrics with what matters most and to better support development officers with goals and leading indicators to keep them on track.
This white paper from the Advancement Forum is organized into three sections:
Advancement’s Growing Revenue Pressures
Review this section to see the contrast between president and board plans to weather the current budgetary crisis with advancement’s reality of a tough fundraising year ahead.
Optimizing Gift Officer Performance Goals
Use the data in this section to compare changes you’ve made to your shop’s revenue, proposal, and qualification goals to other shops across…