This study examined characteristics, structure, communication, and donor behavior related to young alumni at top research institutions with a specific focus on young alumni donor behavior at institutions with or without dedicated young alumni programs. The purpose of this study was for institutions to learn from peers and determine if a dedicated…

Alternative Breaks are service trips that occur at colleges and universities all around the United States, but little is known of their long-term impact on the participants. This study explored how alumni of Alternative Break programs were civically engaged in their communities post-graduation. The survey instrument, modeled on the Life After…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have a history of "doing more with less" and this is often reflected in their effectiveness in securing financial resources from private donors. The purpose of this study is to probe and explore how the Kresge Foundation's HBCU Initiative strengthened HBCU fundraising capacity from…

Research shows that there is a shortage of effective teachers in many rural and urban K-12 public schools serving the highest proportions of high-poverty students across the United States. In the past 10 years, alternative route teacher preparation programs aiming to address this shortage proliferated across the United States. These programs seek…

Community colleges are often viewed as the gateway to higher education as well as institutions that can rapidly prepare students to enter the workforce. Yet, in spite of widespread acclaim for their effectiveness and success, community colleges have done very little to garner volunteer and financial support from their alumni. Admittedly, many…

Adequate funding has become a critical issue for institutions of higher education, affecting outcomes such as accessibility, affordability, and quality of education. The recent economic recession has been detrimental for state funding, resulting in budget cuts for higher education in a majority of states. Overall, state funding has not kept pace…

This study sought to ascertain the specific motivations behind doctoral alumni giving. Most U.S. colleges and universities depend on alumni giving to supplement revenues from tuition and governmental support; however, relatively little alumni giving is generated from PhD graduates. The result is untapped revenue for doctoral-granting institutions.…

An ongoing controversy in the literature on the economics of higher education centers on whether the success of a school's athletic program affects alumni donations. This paper uses a unique data set to investigate this issue. The data contain detailed information about donations made by alumni of a selective research university as well as a…

Colleges have raised their expectations about the kind of contributions they can attract from individuals, paying particular attention to "ultimate gifts" that an individual can make only once in a lifetime. Recent successful fund-raising is also due in part to improved college fund-raising capabilities. (MSE)

Alumni and other individuals' contributions to colleges rose sharply in academic 1985-86, totaling 48.8 percent of all donations. Institutions' fund-raising focus on individuals has succeeded in increasing the average gift and the number of gifts, while corporate gifts have grown more slowly. (MSE)

Graphics, survey research, and multivariate statistical techniques were applied at a private liberal arts college to help development professionals better understand and predict alumni giving behavior, on both an aggregate and an individual basis. (Author)

This article describes a study whose primary purposes were to determine the characteristics of an effective fund-raising program, the marketing practices that contribute to the success of a fund-raising program, and factors of the development system's influence on a fund-raising program. This study utilized a Delphi research instrument. Initially,…

Fund raising effectiveness in 10 types of higher education institutions and for four major donor groups was studied. Separate analyses were undertaken for public and private institutions of five types (research, doctoral, comprehensive, baccalaureate, and two-year). Donor types were alumni gifts, non-alumni gifts, corporate gifts, and foundation…

Government matching fund programs, at their most fundamental level, are state-based initiatives that match private donations to colleges and universities with public funds. These programs have proven to be effective methods of improving public colleges and universities and successful examples of public-private partnerships, which are key…

Loyal alumni are a mainstay of financial support for many universities. This empirical study of university alumni situates the emerging theory of brand community within the world of university development and advancement. The study measures key relationships that one would expect to find in a healthy university brand community. Most importantly,…