Date of Award

1986

Degree Name

Educational Leadership

College

College of Education and Professional Development

Type of Degree

Ed.D.

Document Type

Dissertation

First Advisor

D. Stephen Cupps

Second Advisor

Richard Hartnett

Third Advisor

Paul A. Leary

Fourth Advisor

Jack Yeager

Fifth Advisor

Richard Meckley

Abstract

The primary purpose of the study was to generate predictive data to be used by fund raisers at Butler University, specifically, and similar institutions, generally, as attempts are made to focus alumni fund raising programs. To accomplish this, relationships were investigated between selected characteristics of Butler University alumni annual fund donors and non-donors.

The study attempted to examine a category of hypotheses that certain demographic characteristics of Butler University alumni are not significant with respect to those who donate and those who do not donate to the University. A category of null hypotheses—that there are no significant demographic differences among alumni in various contribution level categories—was also tested. The characteristics examined were: sex, age, marital status, parenthood, number of children, children's age range, distance lived from Butler, employment status, major college of study, type of degree earned, graduation period, fraternity or sorority affiliation, commuter or residential student; receipt of institutional scholarship or grant, university job placement, involvement in student activities, involvement in alumni activities, whether spouse attended college and whether spouse contributed to Butler.

A mail questionnaire was utilized to survey a stratified random sample of Butler University alumni. The mail questionnaire was sent to 400 alumni donors and 400 alumni non-donors. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Crosstabs Program was utilized to compute the chi-square statistic for analysis of data acquired at the .05 level of significance.

As a result of statistical analysis the data suggested that the characteristics of age, number of children, children's age range, distance lived from Butler, major college of study, type of degree earned, graduation period, fraternity or sorority affiliation, Involvement in student activities, involvement in alumni activities and whether spouse contributed to Butler University were shown to evoke significant differences between both alumni donors and non-donors. In addition, significant characteristics obtained with respect to contribution level I were the same as between alumni donors and non-donors but also included the characteristics of sex and type of degree earned.

Recommended program initiatives were reported.

Note(s)

The University of West Virginia College of Graduate Studies became the WV Graduate College in 1992 and was subsequently merged with Marshall University in 1997.

Subject(s)

Universities and colleges – United States – Finance.

Universities and colleges – Alumni and alumnae – United States.

Educational fund raising – United States.

Endowments – United States.

Butler University – Endowments.

Butler University – alumni and alumnae.

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