Jeffrey L. Stinson and Dennis

¶ … Jeffrey L. Stinson and Dennis R. Howard, hails from West Virginia University. Found in the 13th issue of Sports Market Quarterly, it starts on page 129 and ends on page 140. "Scoreboards vs. Mortarboards: Major Donor Behavior and Intercollegiate Athletics" examines educational institutions major charitable donors, "Who gives to educational institutions in support of academic and athletic programs?" (Sinson & Howard 2004:129). Traditional thought in regards to donations given to academic institutions believed that the majority of funds coming from charitable gifts were from alumni. Thus, people who had attended that particular institution were thought to be the largest contributors to both academics and sports, in terms of charitable donations. Yet, research has found that in many cases, alumni are proud of their education more so than their school sports programs, which in turn spurs them to donate towards academic programs, and thus there is less fluctuation as seen in schools whose donations rely primarily on success or failures of sports programs. However, a recent study found that much more non-alumni were also giving a large portion of the charitable donations, both to academics and to sports programs. This study, which took place at a major public university, showed that non-alumni were more active in donations than previously thought. Yet, the study also revealed that there were major differences between the donating behavior of the two groups, alumni and non-alumni. According to the research, successful and well-known sports programs at universities significantly increases the amount of funds being drawn in by alumni donations. Thus, institutions with more successful sports programs tend to have larger alumni donations than other institutions with little known or loosing sports programs. In contrast, non-alumni donations were linked more with academic programs needing money. In many cases, non-alumni donors donate specifically to institutions whose academic fundraising was not enough to provide the proper educational environment for their students.