Get a Benchmark of Your Expenses and Performance
Are you making the best use of increasingly limited resources? How do your expenses and performance align with your peers and your own goals?
The 3 Fold Group facilitates a process to create peer groups and then presents data from IPEDs, the NCAA Institutional Performance Program(IPP), and EADA (if IPP is not available) in a digestible format, highlighting specific points of interest for the college or university.
Question #1: How do your department and sport-specific expenses and performance (athletics success, academic success, retention, student profile) compare to other programs?
Examples include:
Question #2: Which peers should you examine? Which comparison groups will be most meaningful (e.g., sport-specific groups, regional, aspirational, academic peers, etc.)?
While the selection of peer groups depends on the needs and goals of the program doing the comparison, it is important to engage other departments in this selection. The 3 Fold Group facilitates consideration of the following:
Do admissions and enrollment or institutional research have any standard peer groups?
How should you balance current versus aspirational peers?
To what extent should the benchmarking be driven by academic comparisons or athletic, or both? Is recruiting crossover and/or admissions application overlap a relevant factor?
What is your need to consider geography?
Question #3: How well are your financial resources aligned with department and institutional goals? Are you spending limited dollars on the right things to achieve desired levels of performance?
The 3 Fold group drafts points of interest to put the benchmarking report in context.
Examples include:
The college has a higher number of administrators and coaches relative to number of sports sponsored.
The college has a higher sport sponsorship and percentage of student-athletes than peer groups, yet the percentage of institutional dollars to support athletics is lower than peers.
Compensation for women’s coaches is significantly lower than for men’s coaches.
Travel expenses for spring sports are higher than peers.