Council for Advancement and Support of Education: Empowering Educational Advancement Globally

Colleges, universities, and independent schools thrive on the consistent support of various stakeholders, including alumni, donors, prospective students, parents, government officials, community leaders, corporate executives, and foundation officers. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) plays a pivotal role in uniting and empowering advancement professionals who work to champion education across these institutions.

What is CASE?

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is a professional association serving educational institutions and the advancement professionals who work on their behalf in alumni relations, communications, development, marketing and allied areas. CASE is a nonprofit association of educational institutions. CASE members represent more than 3,600 colleges, universities, independent schools, and arts organizations in more than 80 countries worldwide. CASE provides knowledge, standards, advocacy, and training designed to strengthen the efforts of the more than 90,000 professionals at CASE member institutions so they are better able to advance education to transform lives and society.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., CASE also has offices in London, Singapore, and Mexico City.

A Merger of Visions

CASE was founded in 1974 as the result of a merger between the American Alumni Council and the American College Public Relations Association. This union created a unified force to serve the evolving needs of educational institutions and their advancement professionals.

CASE's Core Functions

CASE offers a variety of products and services such as conferences, webinars (the Online Speaker Series), books and training materials, and publishes CURRENTS magazine. It also presents the Professors of the Year awards with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, as well as the Circle of Excellence awards. Additionally, CASE holds the Summit for Advancement Leaders, an annual conference for senior-level advancement professionals.

Knowledge Sharing and Standard Setting

CASE provides a wealth of resources to understand best practices, and it sets the standard for what and how we should operate in the advancement world.

Global Reach

International schools and their advancement offices are often thousands of miles apart, but CASE makes the world a smaller place building connections, collegiality and creative collisions across the globe.

Strategic Initiatives and Impact

CASE has undertaken several strategic initiatives to enhance its services and address the evolving needs of the educational advancement landscape.

Reimagining CASE: A Strategic Plan

Midway through Reimagining CASE 2017 - 2021, a significant aspect of the plan has been the refinement of CASE's volunteer leadership structure. It is the first time in CASE’s 45-year history that such a significant change has been made in its governance. The organization spent two years with volunteers and board members across eleven fiduciary groups rethinking the structure to better serve its members moving forward. The change will move CASE from eleven fiduciary boards to one global board and a set of regional councils and district cabinets focused upon member engagement and service.

Championing Advancement

CASE launches ‘Championing Advancement’, its current 5-year strategic plan, which seeks to continue and expand CASE’s leadership role in six key areas: Educational Programming, Thought Leadership, Global Membership, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB), Data and Research, and People and Culture.

Read also: WSAC Overview

Advancement Inclusion Index

In March, CASE establishes the Advancement Inclusion Index for colleges, universities, and independent schools globally to measure their diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging progress in advancement policy and practice. The first-of-its-kind index for the advancement profession, it also captures respondent and demographic information.

Global Reporting Standards

CASE publishes the CASE Global Reporting Standards, which defines a common set of standards, guidelines, and definitions for reporting the results of educational philanthropy activities at schools, colleges, and universities across the globe. This is the first global edition and provides the first major update to the standards since 2009.

CampaignSource

Together with Marts&Lundy, CASE announce the launch of CampaignSource, a new global fundraising campaign benchmarking resource. CampaignSource encompasses two global surveys on educational fundraising campaigns and associated data and reports.

CASE Academy

In November, CASE launches CASE Academy, a leadership-enhanced program directed at professionals with five to eight years of advancement experience.

Supporting Minority Serving Institutions

CASE announces a grant from the Kresge Foundation to build fundraising programs and related services at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).

Addressing Challenges and Embracing Innovation

CASE is committed to addressing challenges and embracing innovation to remain relevant and effective in a rapidly changing world.

Digital Transformation

In order to effectively continue championing education, CASE was at a point where they needed to accelerate their digital strategy, or risk becoming less relevant in a constantly changing industry. With the execution of an effective digital-first strategy, CASE is now equipped to keep up with their evolving environment and more easily adapt to changes.

Data and Analytics

But behind the beauty of the blooms lies a complex operation powered by data, analytics, and strategic innovation.

Technical Debt

Most advancement organizations carry invisible baggage: old scripts, manual workarounds, and legacy integrations that quietly erode performance and morale. Drawing from real-world university case studies, we’ll map methods to identify, measure, and prioritize debt reduction without disrupting fundraising operations.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

The OIC’s focus is to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in advancement, enhance the advancement capabilities in Minority Serving Institutions, and increase the diversity pipeline for advancement professionals in service of educational attainment.

Ethical Standards

CASE has long had a code of ethics for the profession. We are currently engaged in work to update our management standards and guidelines, as well as our overall talent management curriculum. In the context of the recent bribery scandal, CASE released a statement and provided support to our members. What happened, as we all know, was illegal and the universities were deemed to be victims of fraudulent activity. The scandal does present challenges about how people perceive higher education, which we are actively addressing.

Events and Opportunities

CASE offers a variety of events and opportunities for advancement professionals to connect, learn, and grow.

CASE DRIVE

There's still time to join us at CASE DRIVE, March 25-27, in Los Angeles.

CASE Editors Forum

There's less than a month left before the 2026 CASE Editors Forum! Join us in Boston to gain practical advice and creative ideas that you'll use the minute you return to your campus. Talk shop with peers at the magazine exchange, breakfast roundtables, the evening "dine-arounds" and more.

CASE Circle of Excellence Awards

Don’t miss your chance to spotlight the impact you and your team made! Lock in your nomination for the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards now and save before the price increases after March 4. These prestigious awards celebrate creative and meaningful work across nearly 100 categories, covering every aspect of advancement. Show us what you accomplished!

CASE Leadership Conversations

Join us for the next CASE Leadership Conversations and hear from leaders of key national associations - Gabriel Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer at Universities Canada and Vivienne Stern, Chief Executive at Universities UK with CASE President and CEO Sue Cunningham FRSA and CASE VP of Strategic Partnerships Brian Flahaven, CAE.

The Value of CASE Membership

CASE gives us the ability as an institution to start to network and profile some of the great things we are doing. Those opportunities to put our own institution out there has also even helped us in recruiting. I think CASE gives members opportunities to learn and meet new people and peers in this career that are doing similar things. CASE connects me to some of the smartest people in the industry and makes sure I’m not thinking about what’s just working now, but what will be working next, and in future generations.

Global Community

CASE inspired and supported me in developing, establishing and expanding an alumni relations programme at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory which has grown threefold in the last decade. The programme plays an increasingly significant role in EMBL’s mission to support life sciences in Europe and beyond. Together with CASE, we are now preparing to translate this success in offering an Advancement Summit for Life Sciences institutes worldwide.

Leadership Perspective

As a CASE participant and volunteer, I came to rely on the network of friends and colleagues I gained through CASE to help manage challenges and identify opportunities. This is the kind of organization CASE is: it connects people and helps them do their good work better.

Initiatives to Promote Higher Education

Targeted at adults over the age of 35, the project wants to improve public opinion about the benefits higher ed brings to the lives of all Americans.

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