We need 2500 fans donating $50 a month to get to $1.5 mil. If 500 of those did $150 a month that’s $2.1 mil. Totally doable if it’s advertised right and incentivized correctly.
Chatted with my buddy who is a St Bonaventure alumni about NIL earlier. He is doing $50 a month. They have like 2,000 students. Their NIL budget is $600-700k. If we can’t compete with schools like that, then again, shut this thing down. Stop wasting kids futures.
This department, the Mike Hill version in particular, does not value small donors. A lot of small donors can make a huge difference.
My friend I mentioned, I’d bet that every one of his buddies who live in charlotte and went to St. Bonaventure is either donating monthly or yearly to the NIL. We need to get on board and need the heft of the AD behind us in full force.
We couldn’t get 2500 fans donating $50 when it was an actual donation to help kids. What makes you think there are that many people willing to donate that to pay a player? Not to mention keep donating to the AD to just keep things functioning.
I know more donors walking away because to the current climate, not coming in.
Would have to be one hell of a message to try to get people to jump on.
I will say now that it’s coming under one banner and connected with the school for more transparency there is likely a higher number of folks willing to give. The folks involved with ours tailgate with us and I am sure they are working on a new approach. Donations now count towards 49er club ranking and I think they are going to try and get them considered a tax deductible gift. So they are trying.
Great take! The consistent excuses or woe is me attitude on here is depressing. If we don’t want to play big boy ball, kill the program. Programs will continue to win at the G5 level. We won’t be one of them.
I just can’t be that defeatist with a city nearing a million people, metro population over 2 million, and 180,000 alumni.
There’s a reason people aren’t connected to the university. Someone smart and motivated and engaged could turn it around. We’d need a capture rate of 1.1% of our alumni of that 2500 was 80/20 alumni and community/faculty/staff.
It can be done. I have no doubt that the right leaders, armed with a vision, the right attitude, and the right aptitude could surpass those goals with ease.
Instead, when I let my FSLs go, no one even bothered to call me. Not a “what happened? Anything we can do to change your mind?”
That isn’t something you do to a connected alumnus who’s donated and had football tickets since the first game. Not if you care. It just isn’t. You can’t chop that, slice it, or dice it up, and make me believe that the people in charge want us to be all we can be.
The message they are putting about publicly about wanting success doesn’t match their actions. Actions always speak louder than words.
In the old model I was with you on this. Now? I’m not. And the worst thing is I’m not even angry now. Im apathetic. Thats not to excuse places where we could be or should be better - but it’s just something I cant muster emotion over anymore because at the end of the day given this structure I dont think it matters what we do.
I could handle losing. I never left or let tickets go due to leadership or losing. I never even quit donating no matter how much I hated the direction. Feeling hopeless against the changes. That’s what has killed it for me.
Still hoping some structure can come in and restore some hope before I decide to pack it in.
Heard a talk by Hugh Mccoll on youtube, i believe it is on youtube, he discusses all the work that was done to establish the city of charlotte. He also mentions some of the mistakes made including not attracting Tech and VC’s to establish themselves here. He mentioned the whole state lost out on much of this wave.
There is a ton of Tech people now contributing large sums to their universities.
Tech is where much of the economic value has been created in the economy in the last 15 yrs +, it is good we have both engineering & CS departments, maybe could of been even a larger contributor to our school and local economy with a larger investment. I have noticed thru my current kids college search cycle, non traditional STEM colleges have ramped up quickly CS departments to attract students and money.
Tech, oil/natural resources, and real estate are the areas where fuck you wealth is largely created.
Doctors and lawyers make a very good living for themselves, but unless they own their own large practices, they aren’t striking checks for millions. They’re the $10-20,000/yr type donors, which are also critically important for the operating budget, but the facilities budget needs the people that can stroke checks for millions without blinking an eye.
Thats not how things work. The thing about the old days, is they the old days… to quote slim charles. We need to raise money so we can pay these guys. Like it, or not, thats the game
You can keep saying it but people are figuring out how big a waste of money it is to pay players…especially those that leave after 1 year…which is most of them. If that is the only answer…then we shut it down. Like NWA said…no one donated when it was for legit scholarships.
Corporations that want to fund it like a hobby or a minor league…is the only way.
Asking regular Joe Alumni making $80K per year to pony up every year so kids can play a season and make more than he’s making…only to be asked to do it again…is unsustainable and unrealistic.
And we are not the only college with smart alumni that will not submit to this lunacy.
Something has to substantially change…and probably will.
I agree that it is lunacy and not sustainable but a few thousand people donating 50-100 dollars is significant. Until the system changes, we need to survive in this one
I agree with that last statement. Our fundraising and hiring has been terrible. I love the albin hire on paper but we gotta get this thing turned around