The economic value of renovating a school can go beyond the cost of its building and facilities to include extending the life of educational assets and improving the learning environment.
Alumni initiatives to support their schools raise an important question:
How do we measure the impact of community contributions and ensure their benefits last for future generations?

Every school has alumni who carry memories of it. But what if those memories could become an economic resource to improve its facilities—benefiting students who had not yet been born when the initiative’s founders left?

This question opens the door to understanding one aspect of the economics of the nonprofit sector, where the value of giving is not limited to the money spent, but also includes the benefits it can generate and how long they last.

In an article titled “Loyalty to My School… When Belonging Becomes Impact,” Khalid Al-Khudair called on graduates of public schools to turn their attachment to their schools into practical contributions to improving their facilities.

He pointed to the renovation and rehabilitation of Abdulrahman Al-Nasser School in Riyadh, supported by the Mohammed Al-Khudair Endowments, as an example of community participation in improving the educational environment.

This raises an economic question:
What happens when charitable resources go toward improving an existing educational asset instead of creating a new one?

A school is an asset that benefits more than one generation

In economics, an “asset” is a resource that can be used to generate benefits over a period of time.

A school is a long-lived public asset. It serves not only the students who attend today, but successive generations, and it needs maintenance and development to keep fulfilling its purpose.

The cost of maintaining this asset differs from the cost of building it.

Repairing some facilities in a timely manner may help avoid greater expenses in the future, while upgrading other equipment can improve operational efficiency.

In economics, this perspective is known as “life-cycle costing.” It takes into account not only the cost of constructing a building, but also its operation, maintenance, and renewal throughout its years of use.

Accordingly, assessing the value of a community contribution to rehabilitating a school does not begin by asking only how much was donated, but also what problem it addressed and what future costs it may help avoid.

What does the student gain?

Renovating a sports field, equipping a laboratory, or improving air conditioning may seem like a modest project compared with major investments in education.

But the value of these interventions is not measured by their size alone.

An equipped laboratory may make it possible to carry out educational experiments that were previously out of reach. Better ventilation and air conditioning can create a more comfortable environment, while facility maintenance allows spaces to remain in use and reduces downtime.

OECD research highlights the importance of appropriate learning infrastructure, while also noting that improving facilities after they have reached an adequate standard of quality does not necessarily produce educational gains comparable to addressing fundamental shortcomings.

This is why it is important to identify the actual need before allocating funding.

Put simply, maintaining restrooms or repairing air-conditioning systems at one school may be more urgent than adding new equipment to another school that already has adequate facilities.

It is a question of allocating resources efficiently as much as it is a desire to give.

How do we calculate the return on a contribution?

Suppose, purely as a hypothetical example, that a community organization contributed 140,000 riyals to improve a school facility used by 700 students each year, and that the facility would remain usable for five years.

In this case, the cumulative total would be 3,500 student-years of use, bringing the calculated cost to about 40 riyals per student per year.

This is a hypothetical example and is not related to the cost of the Abdulrahman Al-Nasser School project or its student numbers.

It shows how to spread a project’s cost across the years in which it is used, but it does not tell us on its own how much impact the project achieved.

A low-cost project may deliver substantial benefits, while another may offer limited benefits despite higher spending.

That is why impact measurement specialists distinguish between the resources used, the activities completed, the results achieved, and the impact that can be attributed to the project itself.

Spending money to equip a laboratory is an input, opening the laboratory is an output, and increased student use of it is a measurable outcome.

But demonstrating that it helped improve student learning requires additional data and appropriate comparisons that account for other factors affecting education.

Spending tells us what we paid; measuring impact helps us understand what changed as a result.

When loyalty becomes social capital

Al-Khudair’s call also opens another window onto the relationship between education and the nonprofit sector.

School alumni are more than people connected by shared memories; they form social and professional networks that may have diverse resources and expertise.

These networks can become a source of support for facility improvements or for providing expertise and services, based on schools’ needs and applicable regulations.

This intangible resource is known as “social capital”: relationships based on trust and cooperation that help people and organizations achieve shared goals.

But sustaining these contributions takes more than individual enthusiasm. It requires identifying needs, coordinating participation, clarifying responsibilities, and monitoring project outcomes after implementation.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education’s General Administration of Social Responsibility and Volunteer Work has responsibilities that include organizing partnerships with government, private, and nonprofit sectors; designing sustainable initiatives; and measuring their social and economic impact.

This provides an institutional framework that can help direct community initiatives toward educational needs.

Do all schools benefit equally?

One question is just as important as the scale of contributions: How do we ensure they are distributed fairly?

Some schools may have extensive alumni networks able to contribute, while others lack the same networks or resources—even though their needs may be greater.

That is why support should not be allocated solely on the basis of donors’ ties to their former schools, but also through an objective assessment of needs.

Community contributions also remain a complement to government investment in education, not a substitute for the state’s responsibility to provide an appropriate learning environment.

The added value of these contributions lies in their ability to improve services, speed up the resolution of certain needs, or provide new capabilities that were previously unavailable.

From renovation to impact measurement

The rehabilitation of Abdulrahman Al-Nasser School, as described in Al-Khudair’s article, offers an opportunity to ask questions that go beyond what was completed in the building.

Which facilities needed rehabilitation? How many students benefited? Did the project help reduce breakdowns or improve the use of facilities? And how can these improvements be maintained in the years ahead?

These questions do not cast doubt on the initiative’s value. Rather, they help us understand it economically and turn individual experiences into knowledge that can inform other projects.

While loyalty to a school begins with memory and a sense of belonging, sustaining its impact depends on choosing the right projects, implementing them efficiently, and measuring their results.

The economic value of renovating a school is not limited to the amount spent today; it extends to the benefits future students may enjoy.