You may not hold the budget or the authorization for an assessment like this. You do hold something the decision needs: the credibility to say the work matters, and the proximity to see what is actually happening on your campus. Most NASCE administrations begin with someone in your position raising the question.
Community engagement is defended on campus with stories, headcounts, and hours logged. Those are real, and they lose to numbers in a budget meeting every time. The NASCE produces the number, so the argument you already make can be made in the language the institution uses to decide.
Service is central to who we are. We have never measured whether that is true.
Neither role signs the agreement. Both change whether it gets signed.
An assessment proposed by the engagement office is a budget request. The same assessment endorsed by faculty is an academic matter, and it travels further.
A single request is easy to defer. The same request arriving from several directions at once becomes an agenda item.
At most institutions community engagement sits with a dean, an executive director, or an associate or assistant provost. At smaller schools it may be a single office. That person can authorize an administration or carry it to someone who can.
Carnegie classification, accreditation evidence, a strategic planning cycle, or a board question nobody could answer. An assessment attached to an existing pressure moves faster than one introduced on its own.
Pricing starts at $2,500 and is published in full. The work asked of the institution is four items across eleven weeks. Having both answers ready removes the two objections that usually end the first conversation.
We will join a meeting with your leadership and answer questions directly, which takes the burden of defending the methodology off you.
If it would help to have the co-directors of the instrument answer questions directly, we will join the conversation on your campus.