Scholars researching alumni engagement have principally focused on characteristic differences between donors and non-donors, as well as factors that may impact the decision to donate to an institution. However, giving is not the only form of alumni engagement, though hardly any scholarship explores this other side of the coin. In this study, I ask what aspects of respondents' undergraduate fraternity experiences can be linked to staying involved with their fraternity as alumni. Using original quantitative and qualitative data from a web-survey of 129 alumni representing 12 different fraternities from the University of Pennsylvania, I test various commitment mechanisms employed by fraternities to see how effectively they predict monetary, non-monetary, and composite alumni involvement with the respective fraternities. I find that about one-third of respondents self-identify as being involved with their fraternity though only a quarter claim to have contributed financially, leaving a sizable margin that solely participates non-monetarily. I further find that the degree of undergraduate involvement with the fraternity, proportion of fraternity members in respondents' core network, and inculcation of values-based expectations of membership were all positively associated with alumni involvement. Results suggest that fraternities and similar institutions can increase the likelihood that their members stay involved by affording members opportunities that draw upon the positively associated commitment mechanisms.
Ari Stillman (Fri,) studied this question.