July 10, 2019 | Read Time: 2 minutes
College alumni with student debt are three times as likely to donate to their alma mater as those without debt, according to a new study.
The survey by GiveCampus, a digital fundraising platform, found that 34 percent of alumni with student debt had donated to their alma maters in the previous 12 months, compared with 12 percent of those without debt.
The study also found that 47 percent of all respondents — and 58 percent of millennial respondents — would be more likely to donate if they could choose how their donation is used. Thirty-seven percent of all respondents, and 57 percent of those who donated to their alma mater in the previous 12 months, said receiving updates on the impact of their donation would make them likelier to give.
The study, which was completed in partnership with Wakefield Research, found that alumni would most like to see their donations used to fund scholarships (57 percent), followed by academic purposes (44 percent), student organizations (19 percent), campus buildings (19 percent), and athletics (10 percent).
Forty-four percent of the 1,000 respondents said they believed a donation to their college should be at least $1,000 to have an impact, and just 26 percent felt that gifts under $100 mattered at all.
“Donors are deeply invested in the outcomes tied to their philanthropy, particularly when they are giving to projects and programs that are personally important,” said Felicity Meu, director of partner success at GiveCampus, in a news release. “However, many alumni feel that small gifts don’t do much and aren’t satisfied with the ways their alma mater asks for donations. With improved transparency, engaging outreach, and better options for giving, educational institutions can cultivate a culture of philanthropy where every gift of any size matters.”
Giving by Phone
Other findings from the report:
- People are three times as likely to have donated to a nonprofit in the previous 12 months than they were to have donated to their alma mater.
- 40 percent of respondents who donated to their alma mater in the previous 12 months said they were likely to give more frequently or in larger amounts if they could donate easily and quickly from their phone.
- 30 percent of respondents who received a scholarship had donated to their alma mater in the previous 12 months, compared with 10 percent of those who had not received a scholarship.
- Only 12 percent of respondents would prefer to receive phone calls from their alma mater asking for donations. Nor were SMS/text messages (9 percent) a preferred channel for donation requests. Nearly half of respondents preferred to be solicited by email (47 percent).
- 76 percent of people who consider the rising cost of higher education a top issue for the 2020 election had not donated to their alma mater in the previous 12 months, “suggesting that most voters believe the issue of education affordability should be addressed with policy rather than private philanthropy,” researchers said.
- 27 percent of college-educated adults preferred that their alma mater not solicit them for donations at all.
