| Institutions of higher education must rely on philanthropy in order to gain funding necessary to achieve their academic goals. A knowledge of the factors that influence alumni giving, and donor motivation and behavior is essential if alumni fund-raising is to be a regular part of the institutions' revenue enhancement process.; The general purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of identifying donor indicators among alumni of a select number of professional schools at a public research university. This study investigated demographic, attitudinal, participatory, and philanthropic behavior variables derived from a literature review to distinguish alumni donors from non-donors and to distinguish alumni high-donors from low-donors.; The major areas of alumni characteristics explored in this study were: academic experiences, student life experiences, alumni involvement and attitudes, and demographic data.; Survey research was the primary data collection method used. A questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 1000 professional school alumni donors and non-donors. The professional school graduates surveyed included Education, Management, Law, and Medicine. Student involvement theory formed the conceptual framework for the study and took into consideration the academic and social integration experiences of the alumni surveyed. C. Robert Pace's (1984) study findings, that there is a basic wholeness of the collegiate experience which leads to specific outcomes, was tested as it relates to professional school graduate involvement.; The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program was used to compute the Chi-square and t-tests procedures used to test significant relationships between donors and non-donors for the variables chosen.; The general findings of the search discovered that one of the strongest indicators of support is emotional attachment. Other positive indicators of support were: participation in alumni activities; participation in student activities; satisfaction with the educational experience and school; gender; and age. |
