fundraising
What if college football was decided by alumni giving?
The first College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings of 2017 were released recently, and we’ve already had some crazy weekends that stirred up the standings. Because we are both sports fans and alumni giving geeks, we are once again using fundraising data to answer a sports question: what if college football was all decided by alumni giving?
We applied the same methodology as our 2017 March (Alumni Giving Madness) tournament, using the first 25 ranked football programs from the initial CFP rankings as the group. The teams were ranked based on these criteria in a weighted simulator:
- (25%) Overall team strength: the 2016 alumni participation figure reported to the VSE Survey.
- (20%) Upward momentum: the increase or decline in alumni donor count from 2015 to 2016.
- (20%) Recruiting strength and past performance: The total increase or decline in alumni donors between 2007 and 2016.
- (20%) A strong bench of dedicated team members: The total alumni giving in dollars divided by the alumni of record over the last three fiscal years (2014-16).
- (10%) Getting a touchdown pass (gift) off: Our team of expert referees weighed in on a comparison between the institutions’ online giving presence, including ease of online giving, giving day portal (if any), and crowdfunding. They graded how easy it was for an alumnus to “make a pass”/make a gift.
- (5%) Pure luck: Our simulator assigns a small portion of each team’s score to a random factor.
When I fed the data into the simulator for these 25 schools, I saw many of the same things we noticed during our March (Alumni Giving Madness) tournament: a few close calls and several institutions moving up because of recent successes. And the subjective components and random number did affect a few institutions’ ranks. Institutions that raise a very high amount of money per living alumnus continue to dominate, especially if they have had recent alumni donor growth.
College Football Playoff rankings (initial 25 teams) as decided by alumni giving
1. University of Southern California
2. Ohio State University
3. University of Notre Dame
4. Stanford University
5. University of Washington
6. Auburn University
7. University of Georgia
8. Clemson University
9. Washington State University
10. Mississippi State University
11. Texas Christian University
12. Louisiana State University
13. University of Memphis
14. University of Miami
15. University of Wisconsin
16. Michigan State University
17. University of Oklahoma
18. University of Alabama
19. Oklahoma State University
20. University of Arizona
21. Penn State University
22. University of Central Florida
23. North Carolina State University
24. Virginia Tech
25. Iowa State University
These 25 institutions all have a lot to be proud of. Alumni combined to give more than $3.7 billion to these institutions from 2014-2016. And not surprisingly, these institutions have alumni giving participation percentages higher than the national average.
A huge portion of philanthropy to colleges and universities comes from alumni. And because about three quarters of big donors give multiple times to the annual giving program before making their first big gift, your alumni giving pipeline could greatly impact your future success. Good coaches know the importance of recruiting.
How can you put together a great alumni giving strategy?
Talk with us about how you can take your alumni giving to the next level. We’ve got a great win record, and we’ll work with you to put together the right strategy.
Thanks to RNL contributor Brandon Trissler for help on this post.