A progress report on the Center for the Study of Higher Education (CASE) National Donor Data Base Project is presented. The project, which began in June 1987, has proceeded in several phases: (1) data base design; (2) acquisition of data from participating institutions; (3) development of software to load each institution's data into the donor…

Voluntary support of higher education in America is investigated through regression analysis of institutional characteristics at two points in time. The assumption of donor rationality together with explicit consideration of interorganizational relationships offers a coherent framework for the analysis of voluntary support by the major…

The more that is known about what appeals to alumni, nonalumni, businesses, and other types of organizations, the more institutions will know which traits to stress in fund-raising appeals. Year-to-year variations in the amounts of money given to education by different groups were studied. (MLW)

Suggestions on how to enhance a college's fund-raising abilities are presented. Six sections are as follows: exemplary performers (noting the relationships between amounts raised and strategies employed); what works and what does not work in fund- raising (an institution's public visibility is important, and a poverty strategy is not); whether…