Modern Anchor Institution Investment Prioritization Toolkit

Colleges and universities are facing heightened pressure from external stakeholders to demonstrate relevance, accountability, and successful outcomes. Yet many institutions’ strategies remain inwardly focused on traditional, self-serving priorities, and efforts to demonstrate value externally often fail to resonate with key constituencies. To adapt to this environment, higher education leaders must instead embrace an “outside-in” approach that aligns investments with the priorities that external stakeholders value most.

This toolkit will help cabinet leadership teams prioritize their efforts and investments by assessing current performance, local community needs, and the evolving expectations of external constituencies.

Three tools to identify best-best investments for your institution

1. 1

   Modern Anchor Institution Maturity Diagnostic

   Use this diagnostic tool to evaluate your institution’s current performance across four key activity and impact areas.

2. 2

   Expedited Community Needs Pulse Check

   Use this guide to quickly identify urgent and/or unmet needs in the local community that your institution could potentially address.

3. 3

   External Perspective-Taking Worksheet

   Use this worksheet to gather intel about key external constituencies’ perspectives and priorities.

Download the Toolkit