http://www.bankrate.com/lite/celebrity-m...mni-2.aspx

Not many surprises or FBS FB schools on this list...I count 2.

And the others are Ivy League or don't have football...it would seem this kind of success (to the extent we're trying to achieve it) can be achieved regardless of what your football team does.

Isn't this OT??


Posted from my mobile device using the CSNbbs App

The wealthiest alums also aligns pretty well with largest endowments, as one would expect (although other factors play a role, of course):

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-col...endowments

We don't have many alums that can give multi-million dollar gifts but we have plenty of alums that can give gifts of $25,000-$50,000 over a 5-7 year period. We have a ton of alums that can give gifts of $5,000-$10,000 over the same period of time. We can have a $500,000,000 endowment with our current alumni base. The real question is whether we have the leadership and development staff to make this happen? The jury is out on this question.

(07-16-2014 04:10 PM)Longhorn Wrote:  http://www.bankrate.com/lite/celebrity-m...mni-2.aspx

Not many surprises or FBS FB schools on this list...I count 2.

You certainly can't compare the IVY league schools to the rest of FCS. They aren't the norm.

(07-20-2014 09:14 AM)HotHamandCheese84 Wrote:  We don't have many alums that can give multi-million dollar gifts but we have plenty of alums that can give gifts of $25,000-$50,000 over a 5-7 year period. We have a ton of alums that can give gifts of $5,000-$10,000 over the same period of time. We can have a $500,000,000 endowment with our current alumni base. The real question is whether we have the leadership and development staff to make this happen? The jury is out on this question.

Again, this goes to my ignorance of how university fundraising works but...

- We have 100,000+ alumni

- We are over 100 years old

- We haven't bee a teachers college for over half a century

- Our biggest alumni population lives in the richest area of the country (Northern VA)

I'm not saying we are the Ivy Leagues or a school like UVA but we are in a better position than the vast majority of schools in the country. Yet our endowment numbers don't reflect that. The statistics just don't line up because there are other schools getting million dollar gifts that are in a worse situation than we are...

Well, even though we haven't been a teacher's college only for over half a century, it takes times for some of the other programs to evolve. It doesn't happen upon the introduction of a program. It take time. I'm not disputing anyone who thinks our giving rate and total should be higher than it is. I'm saying this tongue in cheek and light heartedly, but when do women ever voluntarily pay for anything. Honestly, I probably know 30 females who I graduated from JMU with and not a single one of them would even have it cross their mind to donate anything back to the school. So, we can hype up our female/male ratio but there's a flip side to that.

(07-20-2014 02:43 PM)DoubleDDuke Wrote:  Well, even though we haven't been a teacher's college only for over half a century, it takes times for some of the other programs to evolve. It doesn't happen upon the introduction of a program. It take time. I'm not disputing anyone who thinks our giving rate and total should be higher than it is. I'm saying this tongue in cheek and light heartedly, but when do women ever voluntarily pay for anything. Honestly, I probably know 30 females who I graduated from JMU with and not a single one of them would even have it cross their mind to donate anything back to the school. So, we can hype up our female/male ratio but there's a flip side to that.

1) Well, hi, I'm Dolley...no you've met 31. I have given every year since graduating (over 5 years now).

2) I humbly admit I am no expert of endowments and what it take to raise money, etc. I'm just saying that there are a lot of other schools that seems to be able to raise a lot more money and do not have our history, do not have our alumni base, and have transitioned from a small liberal arts school much more recently than us.

My theory is there are alumni out there that have the capacity to making a large gift to the school (it only takes a few) but when you have no direction on the academic or athletics side, why would you give?

Maybe HH&C can shed some light because I am sure the experts at JMU have a reason for why the $$$ isn't coming in.

Agree with you for the most part, but any examples on #2? I can't really think of any off hand.

(07-20-2014 03:13 PM)DolleyMadison Wrote:  

(07-20-2014 02:43 PM)DoubleDDuke Wrote:  Well, even though we haven't been a teacher's college only for over half a century, it takes times for some of the other programs to evolve. It doesn't happen upon the introduction of a program. It take time. I'm not disputing anyone who thinks our giving rate and total should be higher than it is. I'm saying this tongue in cheek and light heartedly, but when do women ever voluntarily pay for anything. Honestly, I probably know 30 females who I graduated from JMU with and not a single one of them would even have it cross their mind to donate anything back to the school. So, we can hype up our female/male ratio but there's a flip side to that.

1) Well, hi, I'm Dolley...no you've met 31. I have given every year since graduating (over 5 years now).

2) I humbly admit I am no expert of endowments and what it take to raise money, etc. I'm just saying that there are a lot of other schools that seems to be able to raise a lot more money and do not have our history, do not have our alumni base, and have transitioned from a small liberal arts school much more recently than us.

My theory is there are alumni out there that have the capacity to making a large gift to the school (it only takes a few) but when you have no direction on the academic or athletics side, why would you give?

Maybe HH&C can shed some light because I am sure the experts at JMU have a reason for why the $$$ isn't coming in.

It is unclear to me what the strategy is for fund raising at JMU. I've asked a number of people in leadership about the strategy and how they are going to execute on that strategy. I have not received a good answer yet. I've had a number of conversations and I believe the people I have talked with have great hearts but I don't think a great heart will get us where we need to go.

The fund raising strategy needs to focus on those graduates from 1977-2007. This 30 year block gives us the base we need. We also need a different fund raising plan for those that graduated between 1977-1997. These alums have the greatest ability to give. They need to be asked to give and they need to be told what they money is going to be used for (Return on Investment). When a good case is made, it should be possible to get 10,000 of these alums to give $25,000 each over 5-7 years. The alums from 1998-2007 may not have the ability to give $25,000 each but the plan should be to get $18,000 over 5 years. We need 6,000 of these alums to give this amount. We need a plan for the grads from 2008-2013 with different levels. We really should be trying to get 10,000 of these alums to give $5,000 over 5 years. We need a strategy for current students to give as well and have class giving challenges. If we get $50-$100 a year out of 2,500 students in each class during each year that would be a good start. We don't hit up parents to give during the tenure of the students. We need a goal for this category.

We need to engage more women to give. We target the guys to a certain extent but we are not as focused on the women. There is a group called Women for Madison and I think they are having an event in August. It's just getting started.

Quote:We need to engage more women to give. We target the guys to a certain extent but we are not as focused on the women. There is a group called Women for Madison and I think they are having an event in August. It's just getting started.

Good luck with that.

(07-20-2014 08:10 PM)DoubleDDuke Wrote:  

Quote:We need to engage more women to give. We target the guys to a certain extent but we are not as focused on the women. There is a group called Women for Madison and I think they are having an event in August. It's just getting started.

Good luck with that.

If we don't have a plan to target the women we are missing a huge group that have the capacity to give. Additionally, many women are married to men who are not JMU grads and these women have the ability to influence what the family spends their discretionary dollars on. JMU should be placed in that fund raising stream. Many women have different goals associated with JMU and JMU Development needs to cater to those goals. I know that my goals for JMU are not always aligned with my wife's goals. She is class of '83 and she enjoys football but her focus for giving is more related to academics. She supports our giving to athletics because it's one of my passions but she's not excited to make a gift to the new convo. She was very impressed when Kenny Brooks talked about what a new convo would do for the WBB team. She also is interested in female athletes and what they are doing after graduation. We should be focusing on mentoring with women alums coming back to work with current students. Women are better about relationship building in many ways and JMU needs to recognize this as a way to get them more involved.