The Cost of Raising Funds as a Percentage of Proceeds for College Fundraising was 23.26%, According to The Survey of College Offices of Institutional Advancement or Fundraising

New York, NY (PRWEB) November 27, 2007

Primary Research Group has just published: The Survey of College Offices of Institutional Advancement or Fundraising (ISBN #1-57440-092-4).

The study presents survey data from the advancement offices or their equivalent at 36 American colleges. Data is broken out by enrollment size, type of college, public and private status of the college, and by size of college endowment.

Some of the study's findings were that:

• Close to 22% of survey participants use listservs as a fundraising tool.
• Mean annual spending on telephone solicitation (labor, scripts, telecom costs, etc.) for fundraising appeals by the colleges in the sample was $53,339 though median spending was only $10,000.
• Colleges in the sample with less than 1,225 students spent $347.55 per student on advancement office salaries and benefits, while those colleges with 14,000 or more students spent $28.63 per student.
• More than 44% of survey participants reported a decline in the effectiveness of brick campaigns over the past two years.
• Capital campaigns in general enjoyed the highest success ratings overall, with fewer than 8% reporting the decreased effectiveness of these campaigns over the past two.
• Mean dollars raised by or from the booster clubs was $172,545 while the median was $72,000.
• On average, 90.27% of the funds raised by the booster clubs went directly into the college's athletic programs.
• College with endowments of greater than $25 million had relatively small offices, averaging only 2,650 square feet.
• Over half of all participants reported that the Annual Fund was conducted virtually or completely by in-house staff.
• More than two out of three participants have used an outside consultant or firm to conduct a feasibility study for a fundraising project.
• Colleges on average spent over $14,000 on plaques, medals, and other mementos or gifts to reward donors.
• In our sample, 7 of 10 respondents staged particular campaigns aimed specifically at the college's faculty and staff.
• The colleges in the sample reported using an average of 1,132 hours of student labor for the Annual Fund.

The report's 140 pages and 400+ tables give hard data on a myriad of important issues confronting college advancement, development, alumni relations and fundraising offices. Among the many tables are those that give: rankings of the effectiveness of auctions, capital campaigns, appeals to faculty and staff, brick campaigns, facility naming campaigns, telethons and other types of fundraising appeals. The report also gives hard data on trends in advancement office funding, personnel, budgets, costs, use of consultants and future spending plans. Specifically, if gives data for spending on, direct mail and telethons, feasibility studies, and consultants, salaries and office space, among other expenditures.

The study is available for $295.00. For a table of contents, list of participants and other information, view our website at http://www.primaryresearch.com or contact us at 212-736-2316.

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