Economics and Marketing of USA Universities

The global economic crisis is affecting not-for-profit performances: endowments are suffering, revenues and contributions are diminishing. At the same time donors are targeted by a pressing good-cause related marketing and the competition for resources is particularly keen. Not-for-profits like USA Universities are then confronted with different marketing tools: some of them are typical of for-profits and concern customers, their segmentation and their purchasing-power exploitation; some are, instead, typical of not-for-profits and aim to gain propensity and trustworthiness of donors. The economic and marketing literature counts several contributions about the implementation of marketing, fundraising, investing and other miscellaneous strategies whose final aim is the revenue maximization. From draft application to mature strategies, marketing is exploited by the ‘cultural entrepreneur’ who copes with the eternal trade-off between cultural-artistic purposes and an efficient allocation of resources. As a matter of fact, inside of the organization the competition between marketing experts and fundraisers for the allocation of budget and resources is increasing. The paper’s research goal is to investigate the revenue diversification in USA Universities, referring to 2012’s data of IRS Forms with the highest 2012 revenues. The cluster analysis gives evidence that the highest gain is the result of the implementation of revenue diversification for hybrid profiles. The most crowded cluster is the Marketing Expert with the second highest gain. Focused on revenue-maximization, USA universities are surviving thanks to an efficient resource allocation in marketing, fundraising and other financing strategies