College relations and fund-raising expenditures: Influencing the probability of alumni giving to higher education

Costs of fund raising and college relations data for each of three years from 17 colleges and universities have been combined with the schools' institutional characteristics to predict ratios of alumni donors to total alumni for each school. With factor analysis, expenditure and institutional variables were classified into three descriptor influences on giving: fund-raising effort, donor wealth, and school resources. The expected ratio of donors to number of available alumni for each school was then projected with the use of logit coefficients derived from the limited factor model.