What can the Community Involvement Program tell us about alumni giving at the University of the Pacific.

The purpose of this research is to analyze characteristics and motivators among alumni of the Community Involvement Program (CIP) for donating to the University of the Pacific. The research questions were: (1) what are the characteristics and motivators of CIP alumni for donating to the University of the Pacific? (2) do the characteristics and motivators influencing decisions to donate vary across minority ethnic groups? This research was conducted using a quantitative method to learn the challenges and motivators for alumni of a special program for minority students to donate to their alma mater, a private university. CIP was established in the late 1960s to answer the call of educating minority and other non-traditional university students from the local community. CIP supports non-traditional, first generation, and low-income students at the university through scholarships, academic support and social activities. This study opened a discussion about differences in ethnicities for alumni donations, finding that African Americans are more likely than other minorities to contribute. It also discovered that CIP alumni are very connected to their university and that there is a positive relationship between communications and contributing. In particular, there was a positive significant relationship between receiving a phone call from Pacific asking for donations and motivations to contribute. On the other hand, this population is balancing the expense of paying back loans, raising children and contributing to other community groups with their ability to contribute to Pacific. These findings point to new financial partners for Pacific and for CIP, as well as important ways to connect with these alumni. However, in the current economic (2009) conditions and for a group who is likely to fall squarely within the middle class, Pacific will need to balance its own efforts to gain addition contributions from CIP alumni with the community's needs for these same dollars. Pacific is likely to find that long-term projects, in which all departments collaborate to enhance the connections of alumni with all aspects of the campus, are likely to return the greatest value on those investments.