Azerbaijan was part of the U.S.S.R. for 72 years until the demise of this communist experiment in 1991 (Hunter 1997). During the Soviet era, Azerbaijani higher education was completely tuition-free, along with a provision of a monthly allowance to 70 percent of university students across the U.S.S.R. (Chankseliani 2013). According to Iveta Silova, Mark S. Johnson, and Stephen P. Heyneman (2007), one of the few remarkable developments in Azerbaijani higher education has been the adoption of international policy trends of decentralization and privatization. One emerging trend is the adoption of philanthropy and fundraising practices as a form of additional funding. In order to investigate motivations of alumni giving in Azerbaijan, the authors situate this study in the literature on alumni giving -- mostly based on U.S. institutions -- that emphasizes the importance of institutional identity and personal characteristics of donors to comprehensively approach alumni donations (Billings 2013; Drezner 2011). While the US context for alumni giving is very different in both length of time and social welfare state context, the vast majority of literature is from the US context. This study aims to explore Azerbaijani alumni's attitudes toward philanthropic giving through the lens of the organizational identification theory (Drezner and Huehls 2014). In doing so, the authors elucidate the prospects for educational philanthropy in the post-Soviet postcollectivist societies.