In January 2007, CIC announced the development of a new financial benchmarking report to complement CIC’s Key Indicators Tool (KIT). The confidential Financial Indicators Tool (FIT) report, customized for each institution, will be prepared and emailed to CIC member presidents in late March 2007.

CIC’s Financial Indicators Tool utilizes a set of financial performance measures that are found in the Composite Financial Indicator (CFI), developed for NACUBO by KPMG, Prager, Sealy & Co., LLC, and BearingPoint, Inc. The FIT provides comparative data on four ratios of financial health, along with a fifth composite indicator. Comparisons are over a six-year period. The FIT report is prepared for CIC by The Austen Group, which also prepares the KIT.

The FIT is distinctive in that it draws upon publicly available data—from both the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the Internal Revenue Service Form 990 (available from GuideStar)—and in that the indicators are provided in a comparative format. Collecting data from these public sources means that each CIC member institution does not have to supply all the information, and it helps to ensure comparability of the data. CIC’s FIT will be the first use of the CFI for a national benchmarking report.

Last year, CIC successfully tested the FIT with a representative sample of CIC institutions. Additional details about the FIT, including a sample report from the pilot project, are available here on CIC’s website.

CIC’s Financial Indicators Tool will further complement the expanding array of benchmarking services being offered to CIC member colleges and universities. These services are designed to strengthen the capacity of institutions to make more effective use of comparative data in institutional decision-making.

Thanks to the continued generous financial support of the William Randolph Hearst Foundations, the confidential FIT report is being sent at no cost to CIC member presidents.