...Edit: It's possible that the Stocker bequest was somehow placed in a special fund in the engineering college and, therefore, was never in the OU Foundation and, hence, not part of their reporting. This seems unlikely to me.
That's what I was thinking. There are a lot of ways to give money to a school, and giving through the Foundation is only one of the possibilities. For smaller gifts, that would be the normal choice, but for larger gifts it certainly is possible to make the gift in other ways, such as setting up an independent foundation, or setting up a Trust that in turn donates its income annually to the school.
Back to the other topic, and the "comparing apples to oranges" argument, certainly there are more than one way for a University to maintain a healthy giving program, and certainly the "ultra-elite" schools do exactly that. Everyone knows names like "M.I.T." "Harvard" "Cal Tech" "U.Chicago", etc. The problem is that as you slide further down the list, are they as well known, and how do they stay that way? How about Grinnell? University of Rochester? Case Western?
If the proposition is that "One way to increase giving is to be successful in sports", you can't disprove it by finding schools with healthy giving that aren't involved in Sports. The way to disprove it is to find schools that were successful in Sports, but which have falling giving. Therefore, using
Alan's Wiki data, and computing the annual growth rate for schools from 2005 to 2012:
Ivy League - Avg 4.5% (Penn 6.4%, Princeton 6.1, Columbia 5.7, Brown 4.2, Cornell 3.9, Dartmouth 3.6, Yale 3.5, Harvard 2.6)
Big 11/10 - Avg 5.5% (Nwest 7.8, Wis 7.0, Mich 6.6, Mich St 6.5, Penn St 6.1, Ill 5.5, Purdue 5.2, Indiana 5.2, Ohio St 4.6, Minn 3.4, UNeb-L 2.2, Iowa no data)
SEC - 5.2% (Tex A&M 6.4%, Florida 6.1, U. Missouri 4.7, Vandy 3.7, others no data)
ACC - 5.0% (Ga Tech 8.0, UVa 5.8 UNC 5.6 Duke 5.5, BC 3.8, Wake For 1.4, others no data)
Big 12/10 - 5.8% (Texas 6.7, Okla 6.0, Kansas 4.7, others no data)
Others with FBS football 6.5% -
Ohio 12.5%, NY (aka Buffalo) - 8.6% Notre Dame 8.2, Pitt 8.0, TCU 3.3, Rice 2.9, SMU 2.2)
All others with no football - 3.9%
Wash & Lee 13.1%
Tufts 6.9%
U. Chic 6.8%
Geo Washington 6.8%
U. Richmond 6.4%
Georgetown 6.4%
MIT 6.1%
Boston U 5.1%
Amherst 5.1%
Smith 4.5%
Cal State 4.5%
Williams 4.2%
Pomona 3.7%
Swarthmore 3.7%
Emory 3.2%
Cal Tech 3.0%
Lehigh 3.0%
Washington U (St Louis) 2.9%
Johns Hopkins 2.5%
U. Rochester 2.1%
Wellesley 1.8%
Rockefeller .9%
Case Western .8%
U. Delaware .1%
Grinnell (.1%)
Yeshiva (1.2%)
Notes:
1. Ohio doesn't really belong in this list as they have an under 1B endowment, but their growth rate of 12.5% a year is exceeded only by Washington and Lee on this list, so Ohio is doing very, very well.
2. The only BCS school that are under the 3.9% average for "all others without football" are Nebraska, Minnesota, Vandy, BC, and Wake Forest. What were the football records of these teams in the 2004-2011 time period (related to 2005-2012 giving)?
Endow Grow Rate Win-Losses Pct All Time Pct
Nebraska 2.2% 65-38 .631 .701
Minnesota 3.4% 40-59 .404 .570
Vandy 3.7% 33-63 .344 .498
BC 3.8% 67-36 .650 .582
Wake Forest 1.4% 50-49 .505 .410
So, three of these schools (Nebr, Minnesota, Vandy) that were under the average for non football schools had less football success in this time period than they were used to. One (BC) was moderately more successful than their historical average, and their endowment growth was barely under the average for non football schools. Then we come to Wake Forest. This was an unusually good period for football, and even included an ACC Championship, yet their endowment growth was anemic.
At this point we could look for other explanations for the data from Wake Forest, or we could use Wake Forest to change the premise, and say that while usually athletic success has led to endowment growth, it is possible, though rare, to have athletic success without it leading to strong endowment growth.
As a side note, in the process of doing this data analysis I think I stumbled onto the answer to another question, from another thread, that being, why, with one of the best records in Wake Forest history, Grobe resigned. Perhaps the pressure on him was higher, not because of the football success situation in recent years, but because the endowment growth in recent years hasn't been good. In fairness, the endowment growth in the year he won the ACC was exceptional, but it has been negative since then. Of course, perhaps the blame lies elsewhere, like in the Wake Forest fundraising department, but that's not something I am in a position to analyze.
I would also say that it seems apparent that most Universities believe that there is a connection. That's why they continue to spend on football, continue to pay outlandish salaries for football coaches, and continue to fire coaches at the first hint of a lack of success.
Last Edited: 12/18/2013 3:26:51 PM by L.C.