July 9, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Some alumni make big gifts to their colleges and universities in hopes it will improve their children’s chances of being admitted to those institutions.
Now a new study by two economists has found that alumni are also more likely to give to the institutions they graduated from—and to make larger gifts—if other family members have attended the same institution.
When an alumnus’s parent, spouse, aunt or uncle, or niece or nephew, or in-laws went to the same institution, an alumnus was more likely to give, according to the researchers’ analysis of donations by 12,600 former students at research university whose name the scholars kept secret.
Sixty-four percent of those with relatives who attended the institution made an annual gift, while 51 percent of those without such relatives did. And the average gift of those with relatives who spent time in the institution was higher, $1,114 compared with an $837 average gift from those whose relatives had not attended.
Based on the findings, the researchers said, colleges might be wise to emphasize multigenerational family ties in their fund-raising solicitations.
A working paper provides a summary of the research.
