As outlined in our strategic plan, Indiana Campus Compact conducts a benchmarking process every five years. Benchmarking our organization means that we compare our practices to not only the standards used to define a successful and sustainable non-profit organization, but also that we compare ourselves to similar organizations.
Most benchmarking activities involve a nonprofit identifying strengths and challenges in regards to their capacity, as well as setting capacity-building goals. Our organization believes that some areas of “typical” non-profit capacities should be self-assessed and compared (e.g., fundraising and development, planning, and evaluative), but that we should focus more on our capacity to engage our partners or constituents (students, faculty, staff, funders, policy makers, etc.).
If asked, we hope you will help us assess either our current levels of constituent engagement or how we compare to similar organizations that engage similar constituents.
By assessing current levels of constituent engagement, we can establish baseline metrics and better understand what motivates and inspires our partners or constituents. We can then use these metrics to demonstrate a return on our partners’ investment with our organization, upon which we can “prove” the results of our programmatic and funding initiatives.