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Apr 5, 2017

Here at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, we spend a lot of time looking at higher education alumni giving patterns. Loyal alumni drive a big part of the philanthropic support to higher education. They also tend to be the biggest athletics fans. So, the NCAA basketball tournaments each spring offer an interesting laboratory for us to ask some fun questions. Last year, one of our RNL consultants asked a really interesting one:

What if the NCAA brackets were decided based on alumni giving statistics?

So, we created our March (Alumni Giving) madness tournament to answer that fun question. It’s a fun way to look at how institutions compare in alumni giving participation percentages, donor counts, total dollars from alumni, and even online giving strategy. On today’s podcast, we break down the 2017 results that lead to victories for Penn and Northwestern. You can see all the results, with commentary, round by round at ruffalonl.com/givingmadness. I got Josh Robertson, Vice President here at RNL on the line to go through this year’s methodology and results.

Over 10 billion dollars – That’s what higher education alumni gave in 2016. That’s a huge portion of the philanthropy that makes a difference for students, faculty and all the great life-changing experiences that colleges and universities provide. It turns out that if you base the tournament on giving, not basketball, the winners end up a bit different.

If you’d like to see how you compare to peers on some of these statistics, drop us a line. You can head to ruffalonl.com/givingmadness to request a customized donor comparison report. And we’ll talk about how you can recruit your best possible alumni giving team for next year’s tournament.