This is an age-old discussion due to certain factors within and outside of the school's control.  It is difficult, albeit not impossible, for a school with an arena that seats 60%-75% fewer than the University of Dayton to consistently compete well against that school.  Or against public universities like SLU and VCU.  SLU has been very competitive since opening its new arena.  Dayton and VCU are almost always successful.

Saint Joe's is a good comp, a private school playing in a comparably sized facility.  So how are they spending nearly twice as much as GW?  This, I believe, has everything to do with outreach and marketing, which is far more within the school's control.  According to The Washington Business Journal, in 2017 GW had 80,000 alumni living in the DC Metro area.  Only the University of Maryland and George Mason had more alumni living in the area.  I used to think that we had difficulties attracting fans because kids would come to GW for 4 years and then return to their hometowns which were often outside the area.  This data suggests that this is not entirely the case.  This program needs to do far more than it does to reach these 80,000 people.  Of course a winning team helps build attendance and increased attendance and success on the court should lead to an increase in donations which in turn would allow the school to spend more on basketball.

Two cases in point:  After reaching the Sweet 16 in the 1990's, then athletic director Steve Bilsky oversaw a substantial increase in outreach and marketing expenditures.  The program was advertised on tv, cable tv, radio, newspaper, metro signage, and direct mail.  Attendance skyrocketed that following year; I believe our average per game hovered around 4,000 fans.  So did school applications based on the high profile that GW was enjoying.

Entering 2005-06, the Colonials were coming off their first A10 Championship and returned most of its key players.  The program opted to play somewhat of a non-challenging schedule while the promotional support for the program was minimal.  That team won and won to the tune of 26-1 during the regular season, yet its attendance was nowhere near as high as the team that came off the Sweet 16 appearance.

It is very easy for the school to say that it just does not have the financial commitment from its donor base to spend any more money on this program.  They are not wrong.  However, as the saying goes, you need to spend money to make money and the time to spend money is to capitalize upon a success.  We did this well in 1993-94, and not so well in 2005-06.

The hope is that once JC starts fielding winning teams, the athletic department will recognize that there is a great big donor base who lives in the Metro area which has gone largely untapped, and will spend the money needed to build ticket sales and subsequently, donations to the program.

One minor quibble, SLU is a private university with a little over half the undergraduate enrollment of GWU. I think we should consider them a comp.

Geno, SLU has some similarities as you pointed out, but it also has some major differences.  Their arena holds more than twice as many seats as Smith Center, and their home attendance is roughly twice as high as GW's.  Also, their market does not have any professional basketball (not even in the G League) which gives SLU a built-in advantage.  

Dude, I'm sure that several if not many of the regular posters on this site do donate to the program.  I don't believe the 40 or so of us are the problem.  There is a fairly robust market that could be better cultivated which goes practically untapped annually.