







































Education, Society and Human Studies 
ISSN 2690-3679 (Print) ISSN 2690-3687 (Online) 

Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 
www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs 

1 

Original Paper 

Fundraising in the Higher Education Context: A Topical and 

Theoretical Literature Review 
Elena Madeo1* 

1 Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy 
* Elena Madeo, Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy 

 

Received: March 10, 2021       Accepted: March 24, 2021       Online Published: April 14, 2022 

doi:10.22158/eshs.v3n2p1                       URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eshs.v3n2p1 

 

Abstract 

This paper aims at design a topical and theoretical literature review about fundraising in the higher 

education context. Fundraising is a topic that deserves a multi-disciplinary and holistic approach 

relating to the focus of the analysis: there are some themes that have been investigated more than 

others, whereas others have been objects of analysis without any theoretical framework support. Hence, 

literature about fundraising is still lacking and calls for further investigations and analyses. This paper 

aims at identifying the state of the art about fundraising literature and the gap(s) that further 

investigation should try to fill. 

Keywords 

fundraising, universities, literature review, theoretical framework 

 

1. Introduction 

Fundraising in higher education context is an issue that has been discussed by several studies since the 

Thirties of the XX century (Flack, 1932; Stover, 1930). However, these works were lacking relating to 

the historical perspective and scientific rigor: they were not supported by a theoretical framework, 

since they were delivered by fundraising practitioners rather than academic scholars. The situation 

changed in the middle of the 1970s, when several researches about educational fundraising were 

published, covering a lot of relating topics, like fundraising strategies, donors’ behavior, donations 

drivers and funding challenges (Lasher & Cook, 1996).  

Moreover, collecting funds to sustain education institutions is a very ancient activity that has existed 

since the foundation of the Academy of Plato (Fisher, 1989; Brittingam & Pezzullo 1990). However, 

there are a few literature references regarding educational philanthropy at those times. The situation 

started to change when the first universities were born in the Middle Age (Lasher & Cook, 1996). 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
2 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Within these institutions presidents and deans were in charge for fundraising issues, in order to support 

the academic activities (Schachner, 1962). When the Modern Age started, this situation did not change, 

since the role of rectors as fundraisers was reinforced. In fact, in the USA collegiate fundraising started 

in 1640, with the first president of Harvard College. This is not the only fundraising’s best practice, 

since there were several colonial colleges, in the British North American colonies, that were seeking for 

financial support by philanthropists, before and after the American Revolution (Curti & Nash, 1965; 

McAnear, 1952, 1955). The strategic role of presidents has continued throughout the XVIII and XIX 

centuries: in those days, they were aided by several professional figures, like the governing board, 

alumni board and deans. However, the fundraising success was linked with executive leadership, since 

philanthropic relationships were mainly based on trust and loyalty (Stover, 1930). Then, it was only in 

the XX century that universities started to organize and develop fundraising campaigns through 

professional techniques (Lasher & Cook, 1996). First of all, in the 1920s a new position was created in 

the higher education context: the development officer. Anyway, fundraising responsibility was still in 

charge of universities’ presidents and their staff (Flack, 1932). The following step was to delegate the 

fundraising function to a vice president, who had the role of coordinator with other functions, like 

alumni affairs and public relations (Jacobson, 1990). In some universities, after the World War I, a 

fundraising consultant was in charge for this task (Cutlip, 1965). Finally, since the 1950s universities 

started to employ their own professional fundraising staffs, developing the actual organizational 

structure, according to which presidents are in charge of fundraising strategy, being assisted by 

delegates in charge of fundraising management and coordination with other relating functions (Reck, 

1976).  

From the historical perspective aforementioned, it is clear that fundraising has grown in term of 

importance within the higher education context. Since the Middle Age, presidents have maintained 

their role in determining success or failure of fundraising activities, since they are those who formulate 

the general strategy and vision, who decide which fundraising campaigns have to be run and, eventually, 

who are crucial in managing relations among different board of trustees, like the governing board and 

the alumni board (Cowley, 1980; Panas, 1984; Lasher & Cook, 1996). 

Furthermore, according to Lasher and Cook (1996), literature about fundraising issues within the 

higher education context, especially relating to the presidents’ role, has been lacking till the 1970s and 

the 1980s. Thus, in the 1990s several scholars started to be interested in building a theoretical 

perspective about this topic (Kelly, 1991). Besides, since in 2008 a huge economic crisis started, known 

as “Big Recession”, the interest of scholars about fundraising issues has grown considerably, 

considering different contexts, like nonprofit sector and public entities. Among the latter, universities 

are attracting greater attention from academics (Mapulanga, 2013). Eventually, a new fundraising’s 

phenomenon was born in the 2000s: crowdfunding (Lambert & Schwienbacher, 2010). Nowadays, 

crowdfunding has become one of the most effective fundraising tools, even within higher education 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
3 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

(Colasanti et al., 2018).  

Since the Big Recession has started, governmental financing to higher education and especially to 

public universities has been reduced severely. Hence, these institutions were forced to consider the 

competitive financing promoted at international, national and local level. Obviously, this change led to 

develop new processes and to organize new organizational units for managing all the relating activities. 

This study will be focused mainly on philanthropy, but it is worthwhile to consider the role of 

“competitive fundraising”, especially referring to the context of analysis, which is those of Italian 

public universities.  

Hence, fundraising is an interdisciplinary topic, which covers different fields of studies in different 

contexts of analysis. Literature review shown in this paper will be focused on the public sector and in 

particular on public higher education context.  

This paper starts with the methodology used to design the literature review. This section is followed by 

the literature review about fundraising in the higher education context, providing a general description 

of the streams of literature individuated. Afterwards, the results of the review are discussed as the 

literature gap(s) and further development of the analysis. Finally, some general conclusions are 

proposed. 

 

2. Method 

The aim of this paper is to deliver a summary of the state of the art in fundraising within higher 

education context. Moreover, this literature review enhances to identify the boundaries of the existing 

frameworks and, hence, new areas of investigations. Eventually, this paper’s results are useful to 

recognize literature gap(s) and further research questions (Rowley & Slack, 2004).  

The on-line database used to search for literature about the topic is Scopus (https://www.scopus.com). 

The reasons why it was chosen are various: first of all it is the largest database of peer-reviewed 

literature, with grounded theoretical basis and a critical approach to conceptual models. Furthermore, 

the literature includes scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. All them have been 

considered for the creation of this paper. The search was done considering title, abstract and keywords 

of the references, using the following keywords and the Boalean operators in capital letters: 

- fundraising AND universities: 346 results; 

- crowdfunding AND universities: 65 results; 

- fundraising AND higher education: 69 results; 

- crowdfunding AND higher education: 8 results. 

Literature Review was drawn together following the process in five steps described by Rowley and 

Slack (2004). First of all, the documents were scanned in order to have some insights into the most 

important topics to be included in the literature review. Besides, all abstracts were read in order to 

understand if each literature resource was suitable to the topic/context and the aim of this study, not 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
4 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

considering those that were off-topic. Hence, the outputs of this first step were a reduction in the 

number of references (from 488 to 160) and the categorization of the latter within similar research 

themes.  

Then, the second step consists in making notes of the most important topics delivered by the literature 

resources, in order to recognize the sources to be cited in the paper. Afterwards, literature review has to 

be structured, identifying the key themes, throughout the review, as categories according to which each 

source has to be included. Hence, the structure of the literature review emerges from the literature itself, 

without pre-defined building approach. Then, the broad structure of the review is defined: all the 

documents considered are ascribed to the sections shown in the following paragraph.  

 

3. Result 

Fundraising is a very multi-faceted topic that can be investigated by several points of view. This is 

confirmed by the literature considered by this study and summarized in Table 1: the first column 

identifies the number of the group to which each reference belong according to its focus of analysis; the 

second column shows the number of papers and books contained in each group, whereas the third 

column specifies the focus of analysis of the references included in each group (some of them are 

included in more than one group). Finally, the fourth column indicates the main theoretical frameworks 

used by some literature sources in order to support their researches. These studies are shown in the fifth 

column.  

The first group of references is focused on factors that can influence fundraising success. Most of them 

are empirical studies that try to develop models to understand which are the key performance drivers of 

a fundraising campaign, according to different contexts of analysis. Moreover, some predictive models 

for fundraising’s output are delivered by quantitative studies (Colombo et al., 2015; Vequist, 2017; 

Yang et al., 2017;). However, although results shown by these types of researches are quite interesting 

in terms of empirical suggestions for fundraising practitioners, general conclusions are quite 

tautological because they simply link past results to future goals, without considering interaction effects. 

Furthermore, the first group of references provides the factors that can affect fundraising’s process 

results in terms of output, which is the amount of money gathered by donors. Obviously, these factors 

are not general, but they are linked to the type of the institution, which has begun the fundraising 

process, and to the context in which it operates. Before the beginning of the digital era, Berger and 

Smith (1997) indicate the language’s style used in direct mailing as a crucial factor for fundraising 

success. In detail, they show how suggesting a donation, expressing the frame in a positive or negative 

way and the inclusion or not of at least two independent types of institutional information, in addition 

to donors’ segmentation variables, affect fundraising performance. Later, different scholars pointed out 

the crucial role of good writing and communicational abilities required by storytelling (Allison, 2015; 

Doan & Morris, 2012; Zhou & Ye, 2018). Nowadays, this kind of abilities is really important for those 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
5 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

institutions that are active in getting funds through the social networks (Vequist, 2015). Indeed, on-line 

fundraising is becoming more and more popular since several people are easily achievable through the 

Internet. Hence, all factors like social influence of promoters, interpersonal skills, viral marketing and 

viral networks affect fundraising process output (Doan & Morris, 2012; Yang et al., 2017; Zhou & Ye, 

2018). Beyond the crucial role of on-line fundraising and social networks, providing clear information 

to donors’ (transparency), as precise fundraising goals, means and outcome (accountability), has an 

impact on the fundraising performance (Ahlers et al., 2015; Doan & Morris, 2012). Hence, all the 

fundraising tasks aforementioned need a professional staff in charge with fundraising processes output 

and performance. Factors relating to organization and human resources, like leaders’ skills, staffs’ 

professional capacity, collaboration and relationships’ building are not overlooked by the literature 

(Breeze et al., 2011; Doan & Morris, 2012). More specifically, Breeze et al. (2011) distinguish 

fundraising performance factors as institutional privilege, internal and external factors. Moreover, the 

former concerns university’s reputation as education and research’s institute, organization’s wealth 

from financial point of view and networks with other (public and private) institutions. Relating to the 

latter, Breeze et al. considers focus and investment on fundraising activities and fundraising’s cultures 

of universities as “internal success factors”. Finally, external factors deal with social, economic and 

political environments and regards cultural practices towards philanthropy and the existence of tax 

break for donations.  

Despite the number of works included in the first group of references is quite considerable (30), 

researches supported by a grounded theoretical framework are only a few (2). In fact, in his 

historiographical essay, Freeman (2010) states that he adopts Agency Theory as a framework to explore 

the institutional experiences and documents of northern black colleges in order to explore the 

philanthropy within African-American higher education in the XIX century. This framework is useful 

to understand why, within African-American higher education context there has been a static view of 

philanthropy. However, Freeman does not contribute to the development of this theory, using it only to 

support the results of his research. Then, Allison et al. (2015), in their paper about crowdfunding within 

a prosocial microlending context, adopt Cognitive Evaluation Theory and Self-determination Theory in 

order to explain lenders behaviors: they conclude that lenders are more likely to sustain others when the 

support is perceived as a chance to help other rather than when it seems a business opportunity. Again, 

these theoretical frameworks are used to explain and support research’s results, but researchers do not 

add any contribution to them.  

The second group of references is the most numerous one (52) and it is mainly focused on the 

organizational changes and institutional challenges introduced by fundraising practices. First of all, the 

introduction of the latter includes the presence of fundraising professional staff, in order to make 

fundraising an effective and efficient process (Chen et al., 2017; Cuillier & Stoffle, 2011; Sung, 2016). 

Moreover, even the organizational chart can be developed and changed after the introduction of 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
6 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

fundraising practices and professional staff (Scott, 2013), overcoming some organizational barriers 

(Webb Farley, 2018). More specifically, these studies are focused on the role of fundraising managers 

within universities, also relating to their power and influence, and on the relationship between 

academics and fundraising professional staff (Daly, 2013; Shaker & Nathan, 2017).  

The second group of references is not only the most numerous one, but it provides also literature that 

proposes quite several theoretical frameworks to justify and support their results. The first approach is 

provided by Nyman et al. (2016), who propose Co-creation of Value to explain the role of university 

fundraisers in their relationships with donors. They define university’s philanthropists as social 

investors who want to be engaged with the leaders “of the organization in co-creating the philanthropic 

vision for their gift” (Nyman et al., 2016, p. 1235). Moreover, this vision is crucial for the university’s 

fundraisers’ to get long-term donations (social investment) from these philanthropists. Hence, the latter 

do not co-create value only for the university, but also with and for the society within which the 

organization operates. 

Then, interesting insights are provided by Warren et al. (2016), who, starting from the Neoliberalism 

approach, explore the role of professional networks in knowledge exchange dynamics among 

university fundraisers. They conclude that these networks are important for fundraisers in order to 

develop their professional abilities, capabilities and competences, overcoming the university’s 

organizational barriers, both institutional and geographical ones. Hence professional networks and 

groups are a crucial virtual space to establish a relatively new profession as that of “university’s 

fundraisers”. 

Besides, Huynh and Patton (2015) and Huynh (2016) combine two different theoretical frameworks: 

Resource Based View and Social Network Theory. Their aim is to explore university’s spin-offs 

fundraising issues, trying to understand, from one perspective, the role of entrepreneurial capabilities in 

influencing spin-offs’ fundraising ability, and from another perspective, how social networks affect this 

ability. Besides, another theoretical framework adopted is Resource Dependence Theory (Mitchell, 

2014). Even if this paper regards issues relating to non-governmental organizations, it adopts RDT to 

analyze the relationship between the dependence of an organization from external resources and its 

organizational autonomy. Therefore, this dynamic is also ascribable to universities that actually depend 

on the external environment as well (Chan, 2016). Finally, the last theoretical approach proposed by 

this stream of literature is Public Choice Theory (Cox, 2010). However, this paper states the 

consideration of this framework, without presenting and explaining it. Moreover, the approach is not 

used to support results, preferring the author another framework (Supplanting Theory). Then, the 

theoretical contribution to both is quite limited. 

The third group of references considered by study is focused on issues that are becoming more and 

more important relating to fundraising, especially within public sector (Rooney, 1999). Even if 

contributions are quite scarce (6), this stream of literature cannot be disregarded because it deals with 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
7 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

fundraising effectiveness and efficiency. Actually, these papers are more focused on efficiency rather 

than effectiveness, providing some indicators of the former, as a ratio of fundraising expenses to total 

expenditures by an organization (Lee & Shon, 2018) and return of investments (fundraising 

revenues/fundraising expenses) in fundraising (Rooney, 1999). However, even if this ratio are 

important indicators for assess fundraising strategy, there other measures that have can enlarge 

knowledge about the fundraising efficiency concept itself, as per dollar effects of investments in human 

resources and physical capital (Kreisman, 2017). Relating to the theoretical framework adopted by this 

field of study, Resource Dependence Theory is the only one. More specifically, Sacristan Lopez de los 

Mozos et al. (2016) start from this approach to understand how fundraising efficiency changes 

according to different level of revenues’ diversification. According to them, increasing the level of 

revenues diversification has a negative impact on general organizational efficiency, making fundraising 

outputs harder to be obtained. 

The fourth stream of literature shown in the table 1, investigates donors’ behaviors and donations’ 

drivers by mainly testing the validity of some quantitative approaches, as Price-Information Trade-Off 

(Wong & Ortmann, 2016), Finite Mixture Models (Durango-Cohen et al., 2013a; Durango-Cohen & 

Balasubrumanian, 2015) and Multiple Discrete Choice Models (Durango-Cohen et al., 2013b). Beyond 

the validity of the aforementioned quantitative methodologies, what is really interesting among these 

references is the proposition of some theoretical models, which add some contributions to the relating 

literature. In fact, Wong and Ortmann (2016) define the propose a model to test the conditions under 

which the independent benefit from giving, the charity price (fundraising expenses by organization) 

and the information cost (cost of information acquisition by donors) provide information for giving 

decisions. Furthermore, the model demonstrates that giving decisions by donors can be influenced by 

price-information trade-off. Under this condition, donors care about charity price because they consider 

their donations as social investments and want them to maximize charitable output. However, at the 

same time, they do not want to search for charity price because it is costly. Then, Finite Mixture 

Models and Multiple Discrete Choice Models are used to provide segmentations of university donors, 

such as alumni, in order to have a deeper knowledge of donation likelihood and behavior 

(Durango-Cohen et al., 2013a; 2013b; Durango-Cohen & Balasubrumanian, 2015). The aim of these 

studies is to test the validity of the models, without providing any theoretical contributions, but only 

some practical implications for fundraisers.  

The fifth group of studies considered by this research, relates to issues that apparently do not deal with 

fundraising, especially within higher education context. The number of the references is not so large, 

but they provide some interesting theoretical contributions that can be studied also within universities 

context. In fact, external stakeholders’ engagement is often the condition sine qua non to reach 

fundraising effectiveness. The investigation carried out by Iorio et al. (2017) explains how the 

introduction of fundraising practices amongst academics lead to an increase in knowledge transfer 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
8 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

activities. This fact can be considered as a fundraising outcome. External stakeholder engagement is 

clearly linked to Civic Engagement (Carè et al., 2018) and Responsibility (Mat-jizat & Khalid, 2016). 

The frameworks aforementioned are discussed within investigations about on-line fundraising and its 

recent development, which is crowdfunding (sixth group of references). This multi and 

inter-disciplinarity is caused by the fact that crowdfunding regards different contexts, from the 

entrepreneurial one (equity-based crowdfunding and reward-based crowdfunding) to public and 

nonprofit sectors (donation-based crowdfunding and social lending). Moreover, the references included 

in this group belong to different fields of study.  

Starting from on-line fundraising challenges faced by universities, the dialogic theory is proposed to 

understand if their web presence is effective or not. Moreover, this framework introduces five 

principles for universities to use to enhance their on-line presence and establish long lasting 

relationships with website’s visitors. Actually, most universities are characterized by a lacking web 

presence that is not able to support dialogic exchanges with their donors. Furthermore, according to the 

Dialogic Theory, universities’ website visitors need consistent messages, updates and, above all, 

chances to be engaged in the universities’ activities (Bucci & Waters, 2014). Hence, effective website 

management has a positive effect on on-line fundraising results and universities have to invest more on 

this type of communication (McAllister, 2013).  

The natural evolution of on-line fundraising is crowdfunding, which moves from crowdsourcing stream 

of literature and, then, from Open Innovation framework (Carè et al., 2018). According to the New 

Public Governance paradigm, crowdfunding is a fundraising tool that enables co-operation between 

public sector and the “crowd”, which is non-state actors belonging to civil society (Osborne, 2010; 

Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). Moreover, crowdfunding is a means of innovating governmental 

organizations’ funding by involving citizens (the “crowd”).  

The seventh group of references regards financial stability and growth: even if this stream of literature 

is mainly addressed to non-profit organizations’ context, it is worth to consider the link between 

financial performance and growth capacity, even within public higher education sector. More 

specifically, Chikoto-Schultz and Neely (2016) state that high financial performance organizations tend 

to be older and larger (considering unrestricted net assets and total revenues). Moreover, they are also 

more likely to report capital assets and report high levels of compensation. Finally, they tend to contain 

their total spending by exercising efficiency by investing in talented officers, but limiting the share of 

officer compensation, administrative, and fundraising expenses, as a percentage of total expenses. 

These results are informative for stakeholders who want to understand the profile of an organization 

that is successfully able to achieve both capacity growth and financial stability. The theoretical 

framework adopted is Sustainability approach (Pati & Lee, 2016). 

Then, the eighth group of studies shown in table 1 is one of the most interesting considering the aim of 

this research. In fact, the focus of the analysis is fundraising’s outcome, and, even if the number of 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
9 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

references is not large, it is worthwhile to consider this stream of literature also relating to the 

theoretical framework proposed to analyzed results within public Higher Education context: Resource 

Dependence Theory (Caton & Mistriner, 2016). Moreover, insights from these studies support the 

following considerations for community college leaders: Resource Dependence Theory as a useful 

framework in identifying resource relationships within the environment; the model of market 

responsive institutions as a strategy when successfully applying Resource Dependence Theory; and the 

distributed leadership model as a supported framework in overcoming the challenges presented by the 

emerging leadership competency of fundraising. These results are useful for academic leaders as 

examples that may provide guidance in professional development, project management, and directions 

for innovation in an ever-changing society and public universities system. Further investigation within 

this field of study can provide rich opportunities and contributions to the discussions of thought about 

leaders and change agents in the field of higher education and leadership. 

Finally, the last group is focused on fundraising regulation, adopting the Statutory versus non-statutory 

framework (Breen, 2012). Although this stream of literature seems to be not very attractive from social 

sciences’ point of view, the diffusion of the fundraising practices throughout public universities is 

calling for a fundraising regulation and policy. According to this framework, first of all success for each 

regime (statutory versus non-statutory) is defined and analyzed to understand whether broader policy 

lessons for fundraising regulation may be learnt from these implementation experiences to date. 

Moreover, the key challenges facing each regime are identified and defined. The framework tackles the 

broader question of how measuring success in regulatory terms and argues for better identification of 

the constituency to be regulated, thereby enabling prioritization of the salient performance indicators 

that should be included in any non-statutory framework. 

All the aforementioned streams of literature and relating theoretical framework are the main source of 

literature considered for starting this study and to build a “theoretical ground floor” useful to explore 

and understand the state of the art of the literature. Besides those references previously shown and 

explained, there are other “minor” fields of study and approaches, as entrepreneurial models for 

universities (Williams, 2010); the genesis of fundraising (Hufton, 2008); fundraising’s tools and life 

cycle (Hekmat & Heischmidt, 1993). Entrepreneurial models for universities move from the 

assumption that even public universities have been affected by the introduction of some 

market-oriented mechanisms, as for examples performance-based funding (best universities receive 

more funds from government) and competitive-based funding (best research projects get funded by 

local, national and international institutions). These mechanisms have obviously contributed to the 

fundraising practices and tools’ introduction, particularly relating to crowdfunding. However, a precise 

theoretical framework does not support those studies, probably because the latter is quite new 

considering the context of analysis (public universities). Fundraising’s tools and life cycle is a context 

driven field of study, which does not allow generalizing results of the analysis. However, Higher 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
10 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Education literature concerning these themes is still lacking. Finally, the genesis of fundraising has 

been investigated through an historical perspective, especially by American researchers than have 

focused their studies on the quite-widespread fundraising tradition of the American Higher Education 

context. Therefore, it would be interesting to adopt the same approach in European context of analysis 

to develop comparisons and build a relating theoretical framework. 

 

Table 1. A Summary of the Literature Review 

 

 

As previously stated, fundraising is a multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary topic that can be studied 

taking into consideration several contexts of analysis. However, in order to have results that can be 

generalized they must be supported by theory. Actually, this study moves from the Resource 

Dependence Theory framework (Drees & Heugens, 2013; Malatesta & Smith, 2014, Pfeffer & Salancik, 

1978). First of all, fundraising process is based on social exchanges dynamics, whose impact affects 

fundraising outcomes. Relating to the latters, Lasher and Cook (1996) individuated the key variables: 

 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
11 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

- Leadership of academics and administrative staffs deals with; the willingness to be involved in 

the fundraising process; abilities and skills in fundraising, effective management of the 

institutions; effort and commitment; moral integrity; fiscal vitality of the institution; effective 

planning; effective stewardship of resources; donors’ confidence, and appropriate gratitude 

and recognition of donations. 

- Financial capability of constituency. 

- A clear and strong institutional mission. 

- Personal relationship between donors and institution leaders. 

- Donors’ engagement in institution’s activities. 

- Institution’s reputation, history and tradition. 

- Informed and committed constituency. 

- Predisposition of donors to give. 

- Society’s confidence in the value created by the institution. 

- Economic, political and social situation. 

- Tax policy in terms of state laws encouraging or not philanthropy. 

All the variables aforementioned are crucial for fundraising effectiveness. Then, the lack or scarcity of 

one or some of them reduces the overall impact of the others.  

Figure 1 represents fundraising process within higher education context as a social exchange model. 

Moreover, it is focused on exchange relationships between donors and academic leaders. In fact, the 

core of social exchange theory is individuals’ and organizations’ interdependence, as “a situation in 

which another has discretion to take actions which affect the focal organization’s interests (Pfeffer & 

Salancik, 1978, p. 145). 

From Figure 1 it is possible to state that university’s fundraising is driven by two forces: a continuous 

and recurrent financial need due to the public nature of higher education, and the competition from 

other universities and nonprofit organizations, thus reinforcing a tendency toward reputation 

maximization. As a result, universities tend to follow a strategy of reputation maximization, although 

this is less generally true of some institutional types such as universities with low quality and few 

resources.  

As shown in Figure 1, the Central Actors (Circle B) in academic fund raising are the chief executive 

officer (President), volunteers (the Board of Trustees), academic deans, and fundraising staff (including 

the chief development officer). Four types of intervening forces influence all of these positions: 

environmental, institutional, personal, and role forces (Lasher & Cook, 1996). All these actors are 

involved in Initial Action Strategies (Circle D) such as strategic planning, leadership recruitment, 

policy formulation, budget analysis, program development, staff training, internal needs assessment, 

communication and public relations efforts, stakeholders’ engagement’s special events, cultivation 

activities, and solicitation.  



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
12 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Furthermore, Initial strategies normally focus on smaller annual gifts with most donor prospects. These 

prospects, then, respond in one of several different ways. They may give no response or, if such a call is 

answered, the response may be postponement or avoidance. Besides, some prospects respond 

negatively to such requests by choosing not to contribute, whereas other prospects make a donation for 

various reasons. Usually, for a short-term response, donors will not be as concerned with institutional 

prerequisites as they are for a long-term response, since they are not investing as much. However, in 

some cases, first-time donors will make a major gift, either in cash or capital assets, or through a 

bequest. The arrow going from Circle D to Circle H represents this type of response (Figure 1). Such a 

gift may originate through the donor’s own initiative or in response to a specific proposal put forth by 

the institution. Other first-time donors may choose to give at the same level and frequency on a 

repeating basis and may never mature as a donor for a particular institution by advancing to higher 

giving levels. Such donor behavior forms a type of loop represented by the arrow going from Circle F 

to Circle D (Figure 1). Hence, the pattern of behavior, which universities try to encourage, is to move 

donors from one level to the next, in terms of the gifts’ size and the extent of their involvement in and 

commitment to the organization. This is represented by the step-wise progression from Circle D to 

Circle I, and in order to encourage this donor development a common feature of most fundraising 

strategies is the existence of giving “clubs” representing specific donation levels.  

The arrow going from Circle I to Circle G represents another loop: this is the case of the donor who 

provides major gifts periodically, either spontaneously or in response to individualized requests. 

Besides, this behavior may culminate in a bequest or testamentary gift that will be the donor's ultimate 

expression of commitment to the institution. A final type of donor response is not represented in Figure 

1: it is the rare case where an unknown or unsolicited donor initiates a gift. This donor may schedule an 

appointment with the development office, to obtain information and/or to discuss his or her interest in 

making a gift or supporting a certain activity. Hence, there are a number of variations for each type of 

donor response, but the primary aim of Figure 1 is to illustrate fundraising from an institutional 

perspective and to show the systematic and cyclical nature of the fundraising process. 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
13 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

 
Figure 1. The Social Exchange Model of Fundraising in Higher Education 

Source: Lasher & Cook, 1996. 

 

Then, Figure 2 seeks to provide deeper and more integrated explanation of presidential fundraising than 

the general context one, shown in Circles B and C of Figure 1. This model shows that presidential 

fundraising is a developmental process with different decision and with four types of intervening forces, 

which have an impact on presidents at each stage in the process. To understand this model, it is 

necessary to consider each decision separately. First, it is obviously necessary for an individual to be 

selected as the president of a university. Then, in accepting this position, an individual brings with him 

or her established leadership styles, personality characteristics, administrative and educational 

experiences, attitudes, values, beliefs, and interpersonal skills.  

Furthermore, this president also carries with him or her some self-created role expectations for the 

position. Besides, others defined as role senders, both inside and outside the organization have some 

role expectations associated with the presidency as well. From another perspective, the president also 

inherits established traditions, history, culture, and other aspects of the organizational life, since an 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
14 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

institution is a complex and dynamic social organism. Finally, the president inherits environmental 

conditions such as capacity of the donor base; philanthropic tradition of the local community, region, 

and state; economic situation; governmental tax policy; competition from other public institutions and 

non-profit organizations; and public opinion toward universities. 

These four forces interact to produce the president's level of participation in fundraising, which is the 

next step in the model. Presidential participation can be viewed as a continuum, with one extreme being 

no participation in fundraising, and the other extreme being full participation. Obviously, very few 

presidents operate at either extreme. Instead, the majority is located somewhere between these polar 

opposites. Moreover, one reason for these different levels of participation is that typically one of the 

four forces is predominant among the others. In reality, all the four forces exert differing levels of 

influence on presidents and thus affect presidential decision-making and behavior in varying degrees. 

Hence, presidents must develop an integrated view of these forces in order to use the fundraising 

potential of their institutions and to maximize the fundraising effectiveness and success.  

In summary, presidents both bring with them and inherit certain realities that interact to determine how 

much time and energy they spend on fundraising and on which parts of the fundraising process and 

programs they focus their efforts and attention. Furthermore, these forces also determine how well 

presidents will perform in fundraising: hence, there is a multiple effect although the strength of each 

force changes over time and collectively the four forces change presidents over time as well. 

 

 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
15 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

 

Figure 2. Four Forces Model of Presidential Fundraising in Higher Education 

Source: Lasher & Cook, 1996. 

 

4. Discussion 

The RDT approach presents some implications. First of all, although the president of a university is 

typically the central player on the fundraising team, presidents have a limited number of cards they can 

play with donor prospects, as the stature of the presidential office or position, the quality and prestige 

of the university being represented, the importance of higher education to society, interpersonal skills, 

appeals to donor motives, the strength of relationship between the donor and the university, the stature 

and prestige of members of the development team. In addition, presidents must have a sense of what is 

possible and desirable for their institutions, and this can come only through strategic planning activities 

and process.  

Second, fundraising must be studied more as a team effort than as the responsibility of any one person 

or position, as a dynamic process rather than as a series of static steps. Moreover, the subtlety and 

complexity inherent to the fundraising process can only be fully appreciated as a dynamic group 

activity involving a number of interpersonal relationships, role transactions, and social exchanges.  

Third, although basic aspects of fundraising are among different organizations, fundraising is 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
16 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

situation-specific and can only be fully understood in terms of a particular context. Furthermore, there 

are considerable variations between institutions of the same type, as universities. Differences in culture, 

history, tradition, mission, number of alumni, capacity of the donor base, prestige, academic quality, 

commitment, effort, leadership style of the president and development officers play a critical role in 

fundraising outcomes. Hence, results relating to one institution are not automatically replicable at 

another institution.  

Finally, it is perhaps better to speak of fundraising effectiveness rather than fundraising success. 

However, both are important: success is probably an easier concept to grasp and to quantify and fits 

more readily within a short-term time period, which is where most fundraisers and presidents have to 

operate. From another perspective, the long-term stability, growth, and maturity of an organization's 

development program are dependent upon variables and forces that may have little to do with a 

particular comprehensive campaign or annual fund drive. Hence, effectiveness emphasizes 

performance relative to fundraising potential given present capabilities and realities, whereas success 

emphasizes performance relative to a predetermined goal in a predetermined time period. Therefore, 

fundraisers and presidents need to have both short-term and long-term objectives for their institutions. 

The concept of effectiveness also carries with it a broader perspective on fund raising and encourages 

more focus on basic prerequisites that must usually be in place before donors will consider making a 

major or ultimate gift to an institution.  

The models previously shown imply new ground in enhancing an understanding of university’s 

fundraising in general and presidential fundraising in particular. These models are useful both for 

scholars and for practitioners. Table 1 provides a comprehensive guideline to decision-makers such as 

presidents, vice presidents for development, and governing boards regarding the key variables or 

prerequisites for sustained effectiveness in fundraising. Moreover, this list provides administrators with 

a tool to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of their institutions relating to fundraising 

potential and capability. Then, Figure 1 provides an overview of the fundraising process at universities. 

It is focused on a general context that is dynamic and changing rather than a series of events that are 

static and predictable.  

Finally, Figure 2 focuses on presidential fundraising. In this model, intervening variables include 

environmental, institutional, role, and personal forces. These forces interact to determine who is 

selected as a university’s president, the extent and direction of the president’s involvement in 

fundraising, and the effectiveness of the latter in fundraising process. The same four forces also have an 

impact on other key players on the fundraising team such as academic leaders and senior members of 

the fundraising staff.  

The analysis of the state of the art of the literature shows that fundraising is a topic that deserves a 

multi-disciplinary and holistic approach relating to the focus of the analysis. Moreover, there are some 

themes that have been investigated more than others. Besides some of have been objects of analysis 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
17 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

without any theoretical framework support. Hence, this could be the starting point for focusing the 

theoretical analysis on fundraising as a means to support university’s outcome. This means that the 

investigation does not concern with fundraising’s outcome, but it deals with the impact of fundraising 

output on university’s outcome and, hence, on university’s mission. The assumption behind this 

reasoning is the triangular relation among fundraising process’ output, university’s outcome and 

university’s mission. From this perspective, literature is still lacking and calls for further investigations 

and analyses. 

 

References 

Ahlers, G. K., Cumming, D., Günther, C., & Schweizer, D. (2015). Signaling in equity crowdfunding. 

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 39(4), 955-980. https://doi.org/10.1111/etap.12157 

Allison, T. H., Davis, B. C., Short, J. C., & Webb, J. W. (2015). Crowdfunding in a prosocial 

microlending environment: Examining the role of intrinsic versus extrinsic cues. Entrepreneurship 

Theory and Practice, 39(1), 53-73. https://doi.org/10.1111/etap.12108 

Breen, O. B. (2012). The perks and perils of non-statutory fundraising regulatory regimes: An 

Anglo-Irish Perspective. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit 

Organizations, 23(3), 763-790. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-011-9220-6 

Breeze, B., Gouwenberg, B., Schuyt, T., & Wilkinson, I. (2011). What role for public policy in 

promoting philanthropy? The case of EU universities. Public Management Review, 13(8), 

1179-1195. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2011.619069 

Brittingham, B. E., & Pezzullo, T. R. (1990). The Campus Green: Fund Raising in Higher Education 

(ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 1). Washington, DC 20036: The George Washington 

University, One Dupont Circle, Suite 630. 

Carè, S., Trotta, A., Carè, R., & Rizzello, A. (2018). Crowdfunding for the development of smart cities. 

Business Horizons, 61(4), 501-509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2017.12.001 

Caton, J., & Mistriner, M. (2016). Leading Change: A Case Study of Leadership Practices from the 

Development of the Niagara County Community College Culinary Institute. Community College 

Journal of Research and Practice, 40(7), 615-624. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2015.1125813 

Chan, R. Y. (2016). Studying Philanthropy and Fundraising in the Field of Higher Education: A 

Proposed Conceptual Model. In Facilitating Higher Education Growth through Fundraising and 

Philanthropy (pp. 1-27). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-9664-8.ch001 

Chikoto-Schultz, G. L., & Neely, D. G. (2016). Exploring the Nexus of Nonprofit Financial Stability 

and Financial Growth. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit 

Organizations, 27(6). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-016-9786-0 

 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
18 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Colasanti, N., Frondizi, R., & Meneguzzo, M. (2018). Higher education and stakeholders’ donations: 

successful civic crowdfunding in an Italian university. Public Money & Management, 38(4), 

281-288. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2018.1449471 

Colombo, M. G., Franzoni, C., & Rossi-Lamastra, C. (2015). Internal social capital and the attraction of 

early contributions in crowdfunding. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 39(1), 75-100. 

https://doi.org/10.1111/etap.12118 

Cox, J. L. (2010). Private giving and state funding of Maryland's public institutions: New perspectives 

on support of historically black institutions. International Journal of Educational Advancement, 

10(3), 166-185. https://doi.org/10.1057/ijea.2010.16 

Curti, M. E., & Nash, R. (1965). Philanthropy in the shaping of American higher education. New 

Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Rutgers University Press. 

Cutlip, S. M. (1965). Fund raising in the United States: Its role in America's philanthropy. New 

Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Publishers. 

Daly, S. (2013). Philanthropy, the new professionals and higher education: The advent of directors of 

development and alumni relations. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 35(1), 

21-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2012.727701 

Doan, T., & Morris, S. L. (2012). Middle managers and major gifts: fundraising for academic librarians. 

The Bottom Line, 25(4), 190-195. https://doi.org/10.1108/08880451211292630 

Drees, J. M., & Heugens, P. P. (2013). Synthesizing and extending resource dependence theory: A 

meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 39(6), 1666-1698. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206312471391 

Durango-Cohen, P. L., Durango-Cohen, E. J., & Torres, R. L. (2013a). A Bernoulli—Gaussian mixture 

model of donation likelihood and monetary value: An application to alumni segmentation in a 

university setting. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 66(4), 1085-1095. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2013.08.007 

Durango-Cohen, E. J., Torres, R. L., & Durango-Cohen, P. L. (2013). Donor segmentation: When 

summary statistics don’t tell the whole story. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(3), 172-184. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2013.04.002 

Durango-Cohen, E. J., & Balasubramanian, S. K. (2015). Effective segmentation of university alumni: 

Mining contribution data with finite-mixture models. Research in Higher Education, 56(1), 

78-104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-014-9339-6 

Fisher, J. L. (1989). A history of philanthropy. In J. L. Fisher, & G. H. Quehl (Eds.), The President and 

Fundraising (pp. 18-32). New York: American Council on Education/Macmillan. 

Flack, H. (1932). History of early fund raising. In R.W. Sailor (Ed.), An alumni fund survey (pp. 1-9). 

Ithaca, N.Y.: American Alumni Council. 

 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
19 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Freeman, T. M. (2010). Beyond hegemony: Reappraising the history of philanthropy and 

African-American higher education in the nineteenth century. International Journal of 

Educational Advancement, 10(3), 148-165. https://doi.org/10.1057/ijea.2010.15 

Hekmat, F., & Heischmidt, K. A. (1993). Application of program life cycle concept for fund raising 

strategies in higher education. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 4(1-2), 25-44. 

https://doi.org/10.1300/J050v04n01_09 

Hufton, D. O. (2008). Faith, hope and money: The Jesuits and the genesis of fundraising for education, 

1550-1650. Historical Research, 81(214), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2008.00456.x 

Huynh, T., & Patton, D. (2015). Early-Stage Financing of University Spin-Offs: The. Impact of 

Entrepreneurial Capabilities and Social Networks of Founding Teams During Start-ups. In 

ECIE2015-10th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship: ECIE 2015 (p. 272). 

Academic Conferences and publishing limited. 

Huynh, T. (2016). Early-stage fundraising of university spin-offs: A study through demand-site 

perspectives. Venture Capital, 18(4), 345-367. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691066.2016.1229772 

Iorio, R., Labory, S., & Rentocchini, F. (2017). The importance of pro-social behaviour for the breadth 

and depth of knowledge transfer activities: An analysis of Italian academic scientists. Research 

Policy, 46(2), 497-509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2016.12.003 

Jacobson, H. K. (1990). The evolution of institutional advancement on American campuses, 1636-1989. 

Oshkosh, Wisc.: Journalism Research Bureau. 

Kelly, K. S. (1991). Fund raising and public relations: A critical analysis. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence 

Erlbaum Associates. 

Kreisman, D. (2017). The Next Needed Thing The Impact of the Jeanes Fund on Black Schooling in 

the South, 1900-1930. Journal of Human Resources, 52(2), 573-620. 

https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.52.2.0413-5571R1 

Lambert, T., & Schwienbacher, A. (2010). An empirical analysis of crowdfunding. Social Science 

Research Network, 1578175, 1-23. 

Lasher, W. F., & Cook, W. B. (1996). Toward a theory of fund raising in higher education. The Review 

of Higher Education, 20(1), 33-51. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.1996.0002 

Malatesta, D., & Smith, C. R. (2014). Lessons from resource dependence theory for contemporary 

public and nonprofit management. Public Administration Review, 74(1), 14-25. 

https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12181 

Mapulanga, P. (2013). Changing economic conditions for libraries: Fundraising performance in the 

University of Malawi libraries. The Bottom Line, 26(2), 59-69. 

https://doi.org/10.1108/BL-12-2012-0035 

Mat-jizat, J. E., & Khalid, K. (2016). A Service-Learning Project Using Crowdfunding Strategy: 

Students' Experience and Reflection. International Association for Development of the 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
20 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Information Society. 

McAnear, B. (1952). The raising of funds by the colonial colleges. The Mississippi Valley Historical 

Review, 38(4), 591-612. https://doi.org/10.2307/1892839 

McAnear, B. (1955). College founding in the American colonies, 1745-1775. The Mississippi Valley 

Historical Review, 42(1), 24-44. https://doi.org/10.2307/1898622 

McAllister, S. M. (2013). Toward a dialogic theory of fundraising. Community College Journal of 

Research and Practice, 37(4), 262-277. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668920903527043 

Mitchell, G. E. (2014). Strategic responses to resource dependence among transnational NGOs 

registered in the United States. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit 

Organizations, 25(1), 67-91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-012-9329-2 

Ni, N., Chen, Q., Ding, S., & Wu, Z. (2017). Professionalization and cost efficiency of fundraising in 

charitable organizations: The case of charitable foundations in China. VOLUNTAS: International 

Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 28(2), 773-797. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-016-9765-5 

Nyman, J., Pilbeam, C., Baines, P., & Maklan, S. (2018). Identifying the roles of university fundraisers 

in securing transformational gifts: lessons from Canada. Studies in Higher Education, 43(7), 

1227-1240. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1242565 

Newman, M. D., & Petrosko, J. M. (2011). Predictors of alumni association membership. Research in 

Higher Education, 52(7), 738-759. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-011-9213-8 

Osborne, S. P. (Ed.). (2010). The new public governance: Emerging perspectives on the theory and 

practice of public governance. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203861684 

Panas, J. (1984). Mega Gifts: Who Gives Them. Who Gets Them. Chicago: Pluribus Press. 

Pati, N., & Lee, J. (2016). Benchmarking presidents’ compensations in institutions of higher education 

relative to sustainability and other institutional practices. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 

23(6), 1500-1521. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-03-2016-0034 

Pfeffer, J., & Salancik, G. R. (1978). The external control of organizations: A resource dependence 

perspective. Stanford University Press. 

Pollitt, C., & Bouckaert, G. (2004). Public management reform: A comparative analysis. Oxford 

University Press, USA. 

Reck, W. E. (1976). The Changing World of College Relations. History and Philosophy 1917-1975. 

Washington, DC: Council for Advancement and Support of Education. 

Rooney, P. M. (1999). A better method for analyzing the costs and benefits of fundraising at universities. 

Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 10(1), 39-56. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.10104 

Rowley, J., & Slack, F. (2004). Conducting a Literature Review. Management Research News, 27(4), 

31-39. https://doi.org/10.1108/01409170410784185 

Schachner, N. (1962). The mediaeval universities. New York: A. S. Barnes. 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 3, No. 2, 2022 

 
21 

Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Scott, R. A. (2013). The state of a university: A campus President’s view. On the Horizon, 21(4), 

268-274. https://doi.org/10.1108/OTH-10-2012-0026 

Shaker, G. G., & Nathan, S. K. (2017). Understanding higher education fundraisers in the United States. 

International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 22(4), 1604-1620. 

https://doi.org/10.1002/nvsm.1604 

Stover, W. S. (1930). Alumni stimulation by the American college president. New York: Bureau of 

Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Sung, C. I. (2016). Investigating philanthropy initiatives in Chinese higher education. VOLUNTAS: 

International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 27(5), 2514-2535. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-014-9509-3 

Vequist IV, D. G. (2015). Nonprofit Fundraising Transformation through Analytics. In M. Tavana (Ed.), 

Handbook of Research on Organizational Transformations through Big Data Analytics (pp. 

116-125). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-7272-7.ch009 

Warren, A., Hoyler, M., & Bell, M. (2016). From “shadowy cabal” to new profession: Networks of 

cooperation and competition in UK Higher Education fundraising. Environment and Planning C: 

Government and Policy, 34(5), 837-854. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X15614681 

Webb Farley, K. E. (2018). Can Private Donations Help Public Universities Build Bridges Over 

Troubled Waters?: Practical Lessons for Administrators and Donors. Public Organization Review, 

18(2), 175-190. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-016-0365-z 

Wong, J., & Ortmann, A. (2016). Do donors care about the price of giving? A review of the evidence, 

with some theory to organise it. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit 

Organizations, 27(2), 958-978. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-015-9567-1 

Yang, Y., Lu, C. T., Wang, F., Xu, J., & Philip, S. Y. (2017). Prediction and Analysis of Social Influence 

for Crowdfunding Projects. Hsi-An Chiao Tung Ta Hsueh/Journal of Xi'an Jiaotong University, 

51(4), 91-96. 

Zhou, H., & Ye, S. (2018). Legitimacy, Worthiness, and Social Network: An Empirical Study of the key 

Factors Influencing Crowdfunding Outcomes for Nonprofit Projects. Voluntas, 29(3), 1-16. 


	Figure 2. Four Forces Model of Presidential Fundraising in Higher Education

