Over at his Intermedia blog, Charlie Melichar has proposed a very interesting approach to displaying alumni engagement metrics: an inverted pyramid. (To me it's not really a pyramid, it's a group of triangles, but that's probably beside the point. Charlie now calls it a pyrangle, which I like.)
Charlie says you can
map individuals or groups based on their participation, drawing lines from disengaged to fully engaged in each area. Are certain class years or eras highly engaged at reunion but not giving financially? Are certain groups of graduates giving generously but not engaging with campus life? This diagram, I think, could help us get to some answers.
His approach has some advantages. Of particular interest to me is that it provides a way to display quantitative information visually in a completely intuitive way. With the inverted pyramid you can, for example, display information in a general, conceptual way. In that case, the idea of engagement is the main point.
You could have the shape and size of each element represent a specific dimension that you're describing quantitatively. For example, you could set goals for alumni participation or awareness of various programs you offer – this would be represented by the top horizontal line, where Charlie has put the category labels. Each slice would represent your progress toward those goals, but each could have its own unit of measurement (attendance, dollars, participation rate, satisfaction, etc.).
Charlie commented that
the triangle allows for a left to right ranking of importance of each facet of engagement, based on an institution's priorities. So, you can not only be working constituents from bottom to top, but also from left to right.
Taking it a little further, the width of each slice is another dimension that could carry quantitative meaning, as is the overall width of the triangle top. You could add horizontal lines to each slice to show internal milestones, or project phases as well.
I'm anything but a wizard with charts and graphs, and it's possible that all this can already be displayed on a line graph or pie chart in a simple, non-busy way. But I imagine someone more organized and more accustomed to the visual display of quantitative information could apply Charlie's "pyrangle of engagement" in a number of interesting ways.
At the very least, by looking at information through a new lens, Charlie is inviting a creative and potentially improved way of finding out if we're succeeding at engaging alumni. In fact, I have an idea about how to use this display to measure something else Charlie has talked about: alumni participation in social network sites. If I can formulate those ideas coherently, I'll post them here.
Meanwhile, if you're interested in visual displays of quantitative information then check out Edward Tufte's web site for publications and one-day seminars.
And Happy New Year.
