When Athletics May Influence Alumni Giving

[dcpony]

Interesting findings...

http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/29/giving

Inside Higher Ed
When Athletics May Influence Alumni Giving
April 29, 2008

An explanation that college leaders sometimes give for why their institutions must play big-time sports — and why they feel the need to pour money into big-time football and men’s basketball programs to make them more competitive — is their belief that winning teams make alumni more likely to dig into their pockets when the fund raisers come calling.

The perception persists even though numerous studies over the years have challenged the link between athletic success and giving to a college’s general fund (stronger correlations have sometimes been found to giving to sports programs themselves).

Most of the research on the purported link has focused on institution-level data — in other words, whether a college’s alumni, as a group, contribute more, less or the same based on whether its teams win or lose. But a new study takes a different approach, examining giving decisions made by individual graduates at one selective institution. It finds some correlation between alumni giving and teams’ on-the-field success — but not necessarily the type of connection that would justify pouring funds into high-profile teams like football and basketball.

The study, published by the National Bureau of Economics Research, was produced by Jonathan Meer, a graduate student in economics at Stanford University and Harvey S. Rosen, an economics professor at Princeton University, who together have published several analyses of alumni giving.

This one takes data about donations made by alumni at one “selective research universityâ€

[smu diamond m]

Post, what post?

[NavyCrimson]

Interesting. But not too surprising, either.