12-11-2007, 11:58 AM
I don't think this was posted yet....
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i06/06a00101.htm
Growth in Sports Gifts May Mean Fewer Academic Donations
Money for athletics accounts for more than one-quarter of all contributions to some universities
By BRAD WOLVERTON
As the country's biggest athletics departments have sought ways to pay for multimillion-dollar facility expansions, coaches' salaries, and other rising costs, their fund-raising operations have experienced enormous growth. But contributions to sports programs are eating up an ever-larger share of donations to colleges, Chronicle research suggests.
The country's largest athletics departments and booster clubs raised more than $1.2-billion in 2006-7, a Chronicle survey has found, with some programs more than tripling their annual gifts in the past decade.
Growth in new facilities has fueled much of the increase. Between 2002 and 2007, colleges in the nation's six premier athletics conferences raised more than $3.9-billion for capital expenditures alone.
Over the next few years, big-time athletics programs hope to raise an additional $2.5-billion for new buildings, the survey found. And many programs are expanding their fund-raising staffs to solicit big gifts.
But the sports fund-raising success has come at a cost: While donations to the country's 119 largest athletics departments have risen significantly in recent years, overall giving to those colleges has stayed relatively flat, according to an article in the April issue of the Journal of Sport Management, which analyzed fund-raising figures reported by colleges to the Council for Aid to Education.
Among the surveyed institutions, athletics departments brought in an increasing share of the colleges' overall donations. In 1998 athletics gifts accounted for 14.7 percent of all contributions. By 2003 sports donations had reached 26 percent.
The shift has frayed relations among fund raisers soliciting the same donors and has led to broader concerns about the growing importance of sports as overall funding for colleges has stagnated.
"There's a fear among faculty members that there is a discrete amount of money that alums and non-alums are willing to commit," says Dennis R. Howard, a professor of business at the University of Oregon and co-author of the journal article. "The more the athletic program gets, the less there is to support the academic programs."
Unparalleled Growth
Athletics departments have relied on private donations for decades. But in recent years, as spending on sports has grown at a rate three times faster than that for spending on the rest of the campus, athletics programs have turned to donors as never before.
And sports fans have delivered. Last year 27 athletics programs raised more than $20-million each, the Chronicle survey found. Ten programs brought in more than $30-million each.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led the way, collecting $51-million. Next were the University of Virginia, Ohio State University, the University of Florida, and the University of Georgia.
As sports needs have grown, athletics fund raising has become an increasingly sophisticated business, with some programs overseeing multimillion-dollar licensing deals, affinity-credit-card programs, preferred seating, even game-day parking privileges. One booster club, Seminole Boosters Inc., at Florida State University, is securing $70-million of debt for the university's athletics facilities.
One way programs bring in revenue is fairly straightforward: They charge a seat-license fee for football and basketball, requiring fans to make donations to secure their tickets. For seven out of 10 sports donors, that is the only contribution they make. To get the best seats, however, donors must contribute more — often considerably more.
Seat-license fees, which start at $2,000 in some programs, have led some donors to cut back their contributions to other parts of the college, says Jeffrey L. Stinson, an assistant professor of marketing at North Dakota State University, who has studied the effect of athletics fund raising on total giving to colleges.
"We don't necessarily see a decrease on a dollar-for-dollar basis," he says. "But you do see donors cut back a little on that academic gift because they just don't have the capacity."
Some booster clubs, including the Tiger Athletic Foundation at Louisiana State University, have overcome that problem by allowing academic contributions to count toward premium seating and other sports perquisites. In other words, a $10,000 gift to LSU's chemistry department, for example, will help buy better football tickets.
Ticket-license fees, along with revenue from luxury suites and premium seats, have helped many athletics departments grow quickly. So have mega-gifts. Last year T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire businessman, gave $165-million to the athletics department at Oklahoma State University. In August Philip H. Knight, co-founder of Nike, and his wife, Penny, donated $100-million to the sports program at the University of Oregon.
Many athletics programs are seeing their biggest gains well below that level, however. LSU's booster club, which brought in $35-million last year, saw its biggest jump in donors who give $100,000 a year, says Ron Richard, chief executive officer of the club. The university has also doubled the number of athletics donors who give $5,000 a year, to more than 200.
"With that amount of money, you get a guy who's on his way up," Mr. Richard says. "He's not a millionaire yet, but he's going to be."
VIP Access
By focusing on the wealthiest donors, even programs with smaller enrollments have grown quickly. Just 4,400 alumni make annual contributions to the athletics department at Wake Forest University, only a fifth as many as at some of its peer institutions. But Wake's supporters each give an average of $3,000 a year.
To get the really big gifts, programs often entice donors with behind-the scenes access, such as sideline passes and private dinners in coaches' homes. Three years ago, Wake Forest established the Moricle Society, for donors who contribute at least $55,000 a year. The program has brought in an extra $1-million a year for the athletics department. Society members fly free on teams' charter flights, are wined and dined, and get private "chalk talks" from coaches before games.
"We don't skimp on these people," says Cook Griffin, executive director of the Deacon Club, Wake's athletics fund-raising arm. "You can't spend too much on them."
Many athletics officials say they work hand in hand with their colleges' development offices, and that their efforts have led more donors to contribute to the college's general fund. At the University of Louisville, where private donations have nearly tripled in the past decade, to more than $30-million last year, Rick Pitino, the basketball coach, recently visited a prospective donor to help land a big gift for the medical school.
At Louisiana State, Mr. Richard says he works closely with William G. Bowdon, chief executive of the LSU Foundation, the university's general fund. The two men spent more than 30 years together in the Marine Corps, and their friendship has paid off. Within the past six months, the booster club helped arrange $8-million in donations to academic programs, Mr. Richard says.
But critics at some colleges complain that the athletics fund-raising arm operates independently from the general development program, acting more like a marketing department than a charitable organization. Fund raisers in one big-time sports program recently installed their own software to help cultivate donors, shutting out the university's development staff, says Mr. Stinson, the North Dakota State professor.
In many programs, he says, there is "at least a competitive relationship if not an antagonistic one," between athletics fund raisers and college development officers.
Twenty years ago, athletics was the "stepchild" of fund raising — but not anymore, says Bruce Flessner, a fund-raising consultant who works with many large colleges.
"They were the guys doing the golf tournaments, and no one took them seriously," he says. "Now they've pushed themselves front and center, and they're eating a big slice of the philanthropic pie."
College fund raisers play down the tension between the two sides.
"I don't want to give the impression that there's no rub from time to time as athletics is trying to raise money from big donors," says Bill Sturtevant, vice president for principal gifts for the University of Illinois Foundation. "But those things happen with other programs, too, and you just have to coordinate and work it out."
FUND RAISING FOR ATHLETICS IN 6 MAJOR CONFERENCES
AT LINK
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i06/06a00101.htm
Growth in Sports Gifts May Mean Fewer Academic Donations
Money for athletics accounts for more than one-quarter of all contributions to some universities
By BRAD WOLVERTON
As the country's biggest athletics departments have sought ways to pay for multimillion-dollar facility expansions, coaches' salaries, and other rising costs, their fund-raising operations have experienced enormous growth. But contributions to sports programs are eating up an ever-larger share of donations to colleges, Chronicle research suggests.
The country's largest athletics departments and booster clubs raised more than $1.2-billion in 2006-7, a Chronicle survey has found, with some programs more than tripling their annual gifts in the past decade.
Growth in new facilities has fueled much of the increase. Between 2002 and 2007, colleges in the nation's six premier athletics conferences raised more than $3.9-billion for capital expenditures alone.
Over the next few years, big-time athletics programs hope to raise an additional $2.5-billion for new buildings, the survey found. And many programs are expanding their fund-raising staffs to solicit big gifts.
But the sports fund-raising success has come at a cost: While donations to the country's 119 largest athletics departments have risen significantly in recent years, overall giving to those colleges has stayed relatively flat, according to an article in the April issue of the Journal of Sport Management, which analyzed fund-raising figures reported by colleges to the Council for Aid to Education.
Among the surveyed institutions, athletics departments brought in an increasing share of the colleges' overall donations. In 1998 athletics gifts accounted for 14.7 percent of all contributions. By 2003 sports donations had reached 26 percent.
The shift has frayed relations among fund raisers soliciting the same donors and has led to broader concerns about the growing importance of sports as overall funding for colleges has stagnated.
"There's a fear among faculty members that there is a discrete amount of money that alums and non-alums are willing to commit," says Dennis R. Howard, a professor of business at the University of Oregon and co-author of the journal article. "The more the athletic program gets, the less there is to support the academic programs."
Unparalleled Growth
Athletics departments have relied on private donations for decades. But in recent years, as spending on sports has grown at a rate three times faster than that for spending on the rest of the campus, athletics programs have turned to donors as never before.
And sports fans have delivered. Last year 27 athletics programs raised more than $20-million each, the Chronicle survey found. Ten programs brought in more than $30-million each.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led the way, collecting $51-million. Next were the University of Virginia, Ohio State University, the University of Florida, and the University of Georgia.
As sports needs have grown, athletics fund raising has become an increasingly sophisticated business, with some programs overseeing multimillion-dollar licensing deals, affinity-credit-card programs, preferred seating, even game-day parking privileges. One booster club, Seminole Boosters Inc., at Florida State University, is securing $70-million of debt for the university's athletics facilities.
One way programs bring in revenue is fairly straightforward: They charge a seat-license fee for football and basketball, requiring fans to make donations to secure their tickets. For seven out of 10 sports donors, that is the only contribution they make. To get the best seats, however, donors must contribute more — often considerably more.
Seat-license fees, which start at $2,000 in some programs, have led some donors to cut back their contributions to other parts of the college, says Jeffrey L. Stinson, an assistant professor of marketing at North Dakota State University, who has studied the effect of athletics fund raising on total giving to colleges.
"We don't necessarily see a decrease on a dollar-for-dollar basis," he says. "But you do see donors cut back a little on that academic gift because they just don't have the capacity."
Some booster clubs, including the Tiger Athletic Foundation at Louisiana State University, have overcome that problem by allowing academic contributions to count toward premium seating and other sports perquisites. In other words, a $10,000 gift to LSU's chemistry department, for example, will help buy better football tickets.
Ticket-license fees, along with revenue from luxury suites and premium seats, have helped many athletics departments grow quickly. So have mega-gifts. Last year T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire businessman, gave $165-million to the athletics department at Oklahoma State University. In August Philip H. Knight, co-founder of Nike, and his wife, Penny, donated $100-million to the sports program at the University of Oregon.
Many athletics programs are seeing their biggest gains well below that level, however. LSU's booster club, which brought in $35-million last year, saw its biggest jump in donors who give $100,000 a year, says Ron Richard, chief executive officer of the club. The university has also doubled the number of athletics donors who give $5,000 a year, to more than 200.
"With that amount of money, you get a guy who's on his way up," Mr. Richard says. "He's not a millionaire yet, but he's going to be."
VIP Access
By focusing on the wealthiest donors, even programs with smaller enrollments have grown quickly. Just 4,400 alumni make annual contributions to the athletics department at Wake Forest University, only a fifth as many as at some of its peer institutions. But Wake's supporters each give an average of $3,000 a year.
To get the really big gifts, programs often entice donors with behind-the scenes access, such as sideline passes and private dinners in coaches' homes. Three years ago, Wake Forest established the Moricle Society, for donors who contribute at least $55,000 a year. The program has brought in an extra $1-million a year for the athletics department. Society members fly free on teams' charter flights, are wined and dined, and get private "chalk talks" from coaches before games.
"We don't skimp on these people," says Cook Griffin, executive director of the Deacon Club, Wake's athletics fund-raising arm. "You can't spend too much on them."
Many athletics officials say they work hand in hand with their colleges' development offices, and that their efforts have led more donors to contribute to the college's general fund. At the University of Louisville, where private donations have nearly tripled in the past decade, to more than $30-million last year, Rick Pitino, the basketball coach, recently visited a prospective donor to help land a big gift for the medical school.
At Louisiana State, Mr. Richard says he works closely with William G. Bowdon, chief executive of the LSU Foundation, the university's general fund. The two men spent more than 30 years together in the Marine Corps, and their friendship has paid off. Within the past six months, the booster club helped arrange $8-million in donations to academic programs, Mr. Richard says.
But critics at some colleges complain that the athletics fund-raising arm operates independently from the general development program, acting more like a marketing department than a charitable organization. Fund raisers in one big-time sports program recently installed their own software to help cultivate donors, shutting out the university's development staff, says Mr. Stinson, the North Dakota State professor.
In many programs, he says, there is "at least a competitive relationship if not an antagonistic one," between athletics fund raisers and college development officers.
Twenty years ago, athletics was the "stepchild" of fund raising — but not anymore, says Bruce Flessner, a fund-raising consultant who works with many large colleges.
"They were the guys doing the golf tournaments, and no one took them seriously," he says. "Now they've pushed themselves front and center, and they're eating a big slice of the philanthropic pie."
College fund raisers play down the tension between the two sides.
"I don't want to give the impression that there's no rub from time to time as athletics is trying to raise money from big donors," says Bill Sturtevant, vice president for principal gifts for the University of Illinois Foundation. "But those things happen with other programs, too, and you just have to coordinate and work it out."
FUND RAISING FOR ATHLETICS IN 6 MAJOR CONFERENCES
AT LINK