The Psychology of Financial Giving: Values Congruence and Normative Organizational Commitment as Predictors of Alumni Monetary Donations to Higher Education

Donald G. Gardner () and Jon L. Pierce
Additional contact information
Donald G. Gardner: College of Business, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA
Jon L. Pierce: Labovitz School of Business, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN 55812, USA

Societies, 2022, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-13

Abstract: Many universities around the world depend on financial donations to maintain and enhance their operations. We propose that donating money to an organization is a specific form of organizational citizenship behavior. We theorize that perceived values congruence between alumni and their colleges/universities and normative organizational commitment each provide motivation for people to donate money. We tested our hypotheses using alumni from a private college in the USA, measuring both the amount as well as the frequency of their donations to the college. We also measured alumni self-reports of values congruence and normative organizational commitment. We found empirical support for a positive relationship between values congruence and commitment and between commitment and financial giving. Values congruence, however, was not related to giving behavior; normative organizational commitment fully mediated the relationship between values congruence, and the alumnus’ financial giving behaviors. Higher education organizations that depend on donations from members to sustain their operations might focus advancement efforts on developing a perception of values congruence in potential donors, and/or by stimulating a sense of obligation to give back to the colleges from which they have previously derived benefits.

Keywords: financial giving; values congruence; organizational commitment; higher education; social exchange (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/12/4/118/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/12/4/118/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:12:y:2022:i:4:p:118-:d:886396

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().