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Current students as university donors?: determinants in college students’ intentions to donate and share information about university crowdfunding efforts

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Abstract

Crowdfunding has gained popularity as a fundraising strategy for reaching an online “crowd” of contributors, with many making small donations and promoting the project online to social networks. Universities are exploring crowdfunding as a strategy to connect with non-traditional donors beyond alumni – including students. While higher education institutions may hope to include students given their perceived comfort with online giving and crowdfunding’s focus on small gifts, scholars have not examined students’ perceptions about such activities. Adopting the Existence Relatedness Growth (ERG) theory, this study uses a survey to explore factors that motivate or hinder students’ supportive behavior intentions through a crowdfunding mechanism, specifically donation intention and word-of-mouth (WOM) intention. Suggestions are made for universities to develop communication that creates a philanthropy culture and engages students as potential donors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Advertising and Public Relations, College of Communication and Information, University of Tennessee, 476 Communications Building, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    Moonhee Cho & Courtney C. Childers

  2. Department of Advertising and Public Relations, University of Alabama, 414 Reese Phifer Hall, 901 University Blvd, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35401, USA

    Laura L. Lemon

  3. Department of Strategic Communication, College of Communication, Butler University, Fairbanks, Room 218, 4600 Sunset Ave., Indianapolis, IN, 46208, USA

    Abbey B. Levenshus

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  1. Moonhee Cho
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  2. Laura L. Lemon
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  4. Courtney C. Childers
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Correspondence to Moonhee Cho.

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Cho, M., Lemon, L.L., Levenshus, A.B. et al. Current students as university donors?: determinants in college students’ intentions to donate and share information about university crowdfunding efforts. Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark 16, 23–41 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-018-00217-9

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