Alumni Survey and Community Value Investigation

Overview and Problem Statement

Concordia University - Portland (CU-P) is interested in creating a metric / dashboard of alumni contribution to community which would include volunteer time and impact to non profits and service organizations. The metric would be tracked and reported to stakeholders of CU-P to provide a more holistic accounting of return on CU-P investment in student learning (faculty, programs and initiatives).

Given that CU-P currently does not have a consistent (schedule, methodology, survey instrument) to assess Alumni community impact, how should CU-P move forward to bench and track this concept in an efficient and effective manner?

Metrics for Community Impact

A quick search ( Google Scholar ) for established surveys or metrics of Community Impact resulted in many articles discussing either the need for an instrument or approaches that are still in the theory stage. In particular, there are several initiatives underway such as:

(1) Public pressure on community college funding has created a need to link community colleges to impact on surrounding communities. While an interesting topic, the metrics / variables are linked to current student activities, not alumni or "post degree" contributions.

(2) Non profits and volunteer organizations are looking at ways to capture volunteer time as a metric of operation and size. Several studies established a metric of tracking volunteer hours by category and relating to paid staff. A metric of "six times" was referred to in several studies as a useful tool in balancing volunteer hours to paid hours. In other words - one full time paid staff member should support six non paid volunteers as a metric of efficiency.

(3) Government economists measure volunteer hours as part of a broader GDP statement. The current rate of pay equivalent is $22 per hour, and estimates are that volunteers make up 10% of the broader GDP metric in the U.S.

(4) Additional research, studies focus on how to measure the impact of non profit student Service-Learning projects. In this area, measures of capacity building, satisfaction and helpfulness. However, most research reviewed concluded that "many community-based and non profit organizations do not understand or distinguish between reporting, monitoring and management practices and evaluation" (Carmen, 2007). In short, if the community does not have established metrics for evaluating impact or impact by project, individual contribution (per hour), etc. - how can a volunteer report impact?

Summary / Recommendation:

Initial review to find a survey instrument or other tool that measures community impact (outside of volunteer hours) does not appear to exist as an accepted metric. Recommendation is for a faculty member