Identifying Alternative Revenue Streams for Higher Education

Alternative revenue streams offer a bevy of benefits, including the ability to bolster the finances of institutions, provide goods and services to the campus and its visitors, accelerate digital transformation, and even improve brand reputation. But once you know why alternative revenues are important to higher education, the next question is how to identify opportunities to generate alternative revenue streams on your campus.

Survey your campus and brainstorm ideas

Creativity often needs a spark to get started. Campuses have many diverse activities occurring almost every hour and day of the week, even during the summer, and it’s easy to forget or be unaware of it. To help you think of offices, groups, and activities that generate alternative revenues, look at a map of your campus, scan a calendar of campus events, and scroll your institution's website for an A to Z directory or sitemap. Also, look at categories and lists of alternative revenue sources to stimulate ideas about what’s possible on your campus.

Take advantage of the unique physical, cultural, and commercial assets of your institution

Seek out the unique aspects of your institution and think about how you can manage these attractions to your advantage. Consider goods and services by experts, historic sites and famous architecture and landscaping, popular community traditions, branded merchandise, and non-academic resources and services that are truly unique to your particular institution.

For instance, the University of Alaska sells permits to chop down firewood from forests on their property, and the University of Notre Dame offers burial plots and funeral services. The University of Kansas provides a counseling clinic for children, run by faculty and graduate students from the clinical child psychology doctoral program. All are alternative revenue sources that generate funding for the campus group and/or the institution while providing valuable goods and services.

Locate existing alternative revenue sources to optimize

Don’t ignore alternative sources already happening on your campus, they can be improved to provide better services to the campus and more efficient and productive management behind the scenes. New or longstanding, these are the traditional alternative revenue sources of college and universities—called auxiliary or ancillary services—and include dining services, bookstores, housing, transportation, and more. It may be worth examining whether these various activities need technological and operational upgrades to improve the purchasing experience and the financial margins of the service.

Reach out to groups that need help

Sometimes you have to start your own grassroots campaign. Inform the campus of alternative revenue sources support by providing models and examples of how to manage e-commerce and encouraging adoption of best practices. Kari Foti, Director of the Cajun Card Office at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, seeks out offices and student organizations that could use the Cajun Card system’s ability to process payments and thus generate revenue for an office or organization.

Use reporting dashboards to spot trends that lead to opportunities

Dig into the data provided by your solutions to notice trends that point to opportunities for new goods and services as well as improvements to existing commerce. The University of Alberta compared transactional data on printing with navigational data on foot traffic and found better locations for printers that increased printer usage while also saving $15,000 (CAN). Dining services at many colleges and universities compare dining hall traffic data with course schedules, weather patterns, and foot traffic data to optimize the hours, locations, and staffing of dining halls, which increases sales and decreases costs.

Develop a key part of the finance chart

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, revenues from alternative and “other” sources are 32% of total revenue for public institutions and 26% of total revenue for private nonprofit institutions. That’s a large part of any institution’s budget and, luckily, an aspect it can develop on its own.

Identifying alternative revenue sources is helpful for institutions of all sizes, types, and situations. Each college and university can take advantage of the opportunities and unique assets available to them. If your institution is interested in identifying avenues for generating more revenue streams, download our playbook, Empowering Alternative Revenue Streams in Higher Education, to learn more.