Return on Athletics® (ROA) is a free NAIA member resource that helps institutions make more informed, data-driven decisions about their athletics programs. By bringing together institution-, sport-, and student-level data, ROA provides insights into enrollment, retention, financial aid, and athletics finances, enabling campus leaders to evaluate performance, identify opportunities, and strengthen long-term financial sustainability.
ROA transforms institutional data into meaningful reports that help leaders understand how athletics contributes to institutional success. Using enrollment, retention, and financial aid information submitted by member institutions, the platform centralizes, validates, and analyzes data to provide reliable benchmarking and performance insights.
Through advanced reporting and benchmarking, ROA enables institutions to:
These reports help campus leaders identify what’s working, uncover areas for improvement, and forecast the financial impact of strategic decisions. A comprehensive view of data helps decision-makers to reallocate resources, support budget planning, and maximize the return on athletics investments.
“Return on Athletics has become an incredibly useful tool for us at Friends University. It helps us understand ourselves better, see how we compare to our peers, and stay competitive.”
Dr. Rob Ramsey, Vice President of Athletics and Strategic Expansion, Friends University
ROA provides a deep dive into an institution’s athletics department’s performance and future opportunities. Institutions can compare themselves with similar institutions, analyze conference-wide trends, and understand their overall data relative to NAIA members.
By combining benchmarking with forecasting and performance analytics, ROA equips institutions with the data to strengthen enrollment strategies, optimize financial aid investments, improve athletics operations, and support sustainable institutional growth.
See related: What the PCSA Could Mean for Small Colleges
Each year, Return on Athletics® (ROA) captures data from across the organization to track what’s trending across NAIA athletics and how those trends can be used by institutions to make decisions. From emerging sports to the amount of financial aid awarded, sports expenses, and net return, these trends are the benchmarks NAIA institutions can use […]
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