Millennial Alumni Giving: Factors for Donating to Colleges and Universities

Yolanda Gibson

Advisor: Jaime Lester, PhD, CHSSWeb Design Preview

Committee Members: Jan Arminio, Erin Peters-Burton

Merten Hall, #1204
April 28, 2015, 10:00 AM to 07:00 AM

Abstract:

Currently, higher education advancement professionals have direct responsibility for both fund-raising, engaging alumni, and alumni programming. Alumni are the only permanent members of an institution, while presidents, faculty, staff come and go, alumni are a part of the institution for life (Feud, 2010). Due to the steady increase of millennial alumni graduating from today’s colleges and universities, millennial alumni serve as key stakeholders for many American colleges and universities.  The millennial generation includes population born between 1980 and 2000 and includes approximately 78 million members (Moore, 2012). The purpose of this study was to examine factors that predict giving among millennial alumni, utilizing results from Marymount University annual alumni survey. To determine the factors that have a relationship with lifetime giving among millennial alumni, a binary logistic regression was conducted to determine how well the independent factors predicted giving. The sample size consisted of 756 undergraduate millennial alumni. The study found that campus living, enrollment status, final grade point average, institutional aid, and overall experience are predictors of lifetime giving. As a result, implications for future research were outlined to include replicating the study with graduate millennial alumni as well as academic majors. Additionally, implication for advancement professionals included creating a culture of philanthropy among current students, providing career services to millennial alumni to keep them connected to the university beyond graduation, and crafting tailored messages specifically for millennial alumni were outlined in this dissertation.