An investigation of donor characteristics and contributions to an intercollegiate athletics fund raising program

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between individuals' annual contributions to a single NCAA intercollegiate athletics fund raising program and certain donor characteristics, including sport attendance, undergraduate student activities, philanthropic background, distance lived from campus, and demographic characteristics. After a thorough review of the related literature, a total of 32 donor characteristic variables were identified and a survey instrument was developed in order to collect data on these variables. Survey instruments were mailed to 400 athletic donors chosen through non-proportional stratified random sampling. A usable response rate of 50.9 percent was obtained through an extensive mailing process.; Correlation statistics were examined between each of the 33 variables and 13 donor characteristic variables were found to correlate significantly with individuals' contributions at the .01 level. An analysis of these 13 variables seemed to reveal that the “closer” someone is to the athletic program, whether in terms of actual physical distance between donors' residences and the institution's campus or how closely they follow the athletic program's sports teams, the more those individuals contribute financially to the athletic program. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test found that significant differences did not exist in annual contributions between alumni and non-alumni of the institution (p = .378) despite non-alumni respondents contributing, on average, 30 percent more than did alumni respondents.; Factor analysis was utilized for data reduction purposes prior to conducting a multiple linear regression analysis in predicting individuals' annual contributions to the institution's athletic fund raising program. Eight factors were identified and, subsequently, used in creating a series of regression models. The final model explained 22.4 percent of the variance in annual contributions with just three significant (α = .05) factors/variables: “Sports Fan”, “Philanthropy”, and “Demographics”.; Cluster analysis was used to determine if, of the 33 variables examined in the study, annual contributions would be important in the categorizing of subjects into groups, thereby supporting the utilization of Mullin's (1983) frequency escalator in segmenting and targeting groups of donors and potential donors to athletic fund raising programs. The cluster analysis produced mixed results in this regard and further study is needed to examine the applicability of the frequency escalator in the athletic fund raising setting.