I'm not sure how the number of alumni translates into donations. I'm sure some/many alumni do donate. So, here are the top 15 alumni associations:I don’t think alumni wealth as a whole matters as much as alumni - and other people who want to be associated with a school, which is often relevant for state universities - who are willing to donate to boost the school’s sports, and NIL isn't really going to change who wants to pay money to attract talent. Stanford today already could get a bigger time coach and nicer facilities to recruit more aggressively with its alumni contributions, but my sense is that its alums don’t care as much about that.
Interesting the B1G holds 7 of the top 15 spots.
- Penn State: 673,845
- Indiana: 650,000+
- Michigan: 575,000
- Ohio State: 550,000
- UCLA: 530,000
- UC Berkeley: 500,000
- Texs: 500,000+
- Rutgers: 486,000
- Purdue: 479,000
- NYU: 470,000
- Texas A&M: 436,000
- Wisconsin: 435,000
- Illinois: 425,000
- Florida: 413,000
- Arizona State: 400,000+
- Princeton: 55%
- Williams College: 50%
- Bowdoin: 47%
- Alice Lloyd College: 46%
- Amherst: 45%
- Carleton: 45%
- Thomas Aquinas: 45%
- Holy Cross: 44%
- Dartmouth: 44%
- Wellesley: 44%
Using that as a test average, if 3% of Penn State's 673,845 donates, and let's assume they donated an average $1,000 *(pulled out of posterior orifice), that would be donations totaling $20,215,350. Not a negligible number, but there is no way of telling how much of that makes it to the Athletics Department.
I think more schools hope that the very wealthiest of alumni will donate. Folks like these (I've left off donors to non-US universities or where the donation was for a specific purpose):
1. Michael Bloomberg's donation of $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University.
T-3. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty, donated $600 million over 10 years to the California Institute of Technology in 2001.
T-7**. Philip Knight donated $500 million to Oregon University in 2016, the largest donation to a public flagship university in US history.T-7. Helen Diller, wife of real estate billionaire Sanford Diller, donated $500 million to the University of California-San Francisco last year.T-13. Holocaust survivors Howard and Lottie Marcus donated $400 million to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel in 2016.
T-13. Television mogul John W. Kluge donated $400 million to Columbia University in 2007.
T-13. Hedge-fund manager John A. Paulson donated $400 million to Harvard University in 2015.
T-13. The Hewlett Foundation donated $400 million to Stanford University in 2001, at the time the single largest gift to an American college or university.
T-13**. Nike co-founder and billionaire Philip Knight donated $400 million to Stanford University in 2016.
14. An anonymous donor gave $360 million to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2001.
15. Chuck Feeney, who helped pioneer duty-free shopping, donated $350 million to Cornell University in 2011.
**In addition to these donations, Knight donated $500 million to Oregon Health & Science University to fund cancer research, bringing his total donations to $1.4 billion, just shy of Bloomberg's eye-popping $1.8B. Alas, Johns Hopkins is competitive only win men's lacrosse, as far as I know, although they have been VERY good at it for a long time...winning the second most national championships (9 to Syracuse's 10).