Launching November 2026
One framework for every Advancement career.
Advancement Career Pathways is the first framework built specifically for Admissions, Alumni & Community Engagement, Fundraising, Marketing & Communications, and People & Culture practitioners working in schools across Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
Wherever you are in your Advancement career, just starting out, or already leading a team -Advancement Career Pathways will give you a clearer view of what’s next, and a shared language to talk about it.
What is Advancement Career Pathways?
Advancement Career Pathways maps what good practice looks like at every stage of an Advancement career, across five core streams: Admissions, Alumni & Community Engagement, Fundraising, Marketing & Communications, and People & Culture. Sitting across all five is a set of Industry Capabilities that matter in any Advancement role.
Four career levels – Early Career, Experienced, Emerging Leader and Senior Leader – describe how practice deepens over time: from doing the work, to owning it, to leading others in it, to shaping the systems around it.
It’s not a performance review tool, a ranking system, or a measure of your worth as a practitioner. It’s a shared reference point — a way to locate where you are on your career trajectory, and see where you might grow next.
Educate+ exists to support and represent Advancement professionals across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, and to help shape the future of the profession itself. Advancement Career Pathways is one of the clearest expressions of that goal yet.
Why are we building this?
For a long time, ‘Advancement’ has meant something slightly different in every school, stream and country. This framework gives the profession something it hasn’t had before: a common understanding of what good practice looks like, defined by the practitioners who do the work.
How we got here.
Advancement Career Pathways began with a simple but overdue question: what does good practice look like in every part of Advancement?
So last year we started the process by surveying our membership, asking you about the skills that dominate your everyday work life. Additionally, we created a working group with practitioners from across all Chapters, experience levels, and streams.
This is a living framework because Advancement work, the skills it demands, and the world around us will keep changing, and so will this.
Built by practitioners, for practitioners.
Advancement Career Pathways only exists because of the generosity of the practitioners who helped build it. Our working group gave their time, their experience and their honesty — reviewing drafts, challenging assumptions and making sure every stream reflects what Advancement work looks like.
To everyone who contributed: thank you. This framework has your DNA and the profession is better for it.
St Francis de Sales College, SA/NT
Dilworth School, NZ
The Hutchins School, Vic/TAS
Cuthbert’s College, NZ
HALE SCHOOL, WA
Anglican Schools Commission, QLD
Independent Schools Queensland, QLD
St Catherine’s College, UWA, WA
What this means for you
When Advancement Career Pathways launches, you’ll be able to:
- See where your current practice sits, across the skills that matter in your stream
- Have clearer, more grounded conversations with your manager about growth and development
- Identify what to focus on next, and find the educate+ programs that can help you get there, from APT to mentoring to Chapter Summits
- Use a shared language with Advancement colleagues
- Allow employers to measure our industry in the same way
For the profession as a whole, it means a common standard and a stronger case for recognising Advancement as the skilled profession it is, in institutions and executive teams alike.
See for yourself
Wherever you are in your own Advancement career, there’s a place for you on this pathway.
What’s next?
While we are working to finalise the framework after further peer review, keep an eye out on our website, Socials and Emails for updates for further information on the Advancement Career Pathways prior to the launch in November.
