DFW HOYA
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by DFW HOYA on Feb 27, 2015 13:33:12 GMT -5
Letter Winners Challenge, we got whooped by Sailing & Softball!!!! Final Standings: Updated Friday, February 27 Most New Letterwinner Donors During Challenge: 1) Sailing 2) Swimming 3) Men’s Soccer 4) Football5) Men’s Rowing 6) Women’s Lacrosse 7) Baseball 8) Men’s Track 9) Men’s Lacrosse10) Women’s Rowing 11) Field Hockey 12) Softball 13) Men’s Golf 14) Women’s Soccer 15) Men’s Basketball16) Women’s Track 17) Volleyball 18) Women’s Golf 19) Men’s Tennis 20) Women’s Basketball 21) Women’s Tennis Most Dollars Raised from Letterwinners During Challenge: 1) Sailing 2) Swimming 3) Men’s Soccer 4) Men’s Rowing 5) Football6) Men’s Lacrosse7) Baseball 8) Men’s Golf 9) Men’s Track 10) Women’s Lacrosse 11) Women’s Rowing 12) Men’s Basketball13) Field Hockey 14) Women’s Track 15) Women’s Soccer 16) Softball 17) Volleyball 18) Women’s Tennis 19) Men’s Tennis 20) Women’s Golf 21) Women’s Basketball Highest Alumni Participation: 1) Softball 2) Men’s Soccer 3) Sailing 4) Women’s Lacrosse 5) Baseball 6) Swimming 7) Women’s Soccer 8) Football9) Women’s Golf 10) Men’s Lacrosse11) Men’s Golf 12) Field Hockey 13) Men’s Track 14) Men’s Basketball15) Men’s Rowing 16) Volleyball 17) Women’s Track 18) Women’s Tennis 19) Women’s Rowing 20) Women’s Basketball 21) Men’s Tennis www.wearegeorgetown.com/letterwinners/
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Post by Problem of Dog on Feb 27, 2015 13:35:05 GMT -5
That's a poor showing for Football and Men's Lacrosse.
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eagle54
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Post by eagle54 on Feb 27, 2015 21:56:22 GMT -5
I would like them to publish more statistics around how they measured those categories. I don't think "new letterman donors" should be rewarded.
This looks like the fix is in for where they want the money to go. I think these types of stunts actually turn people off from donating at all. I give a donation back during football season of a sizable amount then they do this and want more but don't count what I already gave. I decide next fall not to donate as I'm waiting for the next stunt promotion but decide we can't win that anyway so they lose me altogether. That's what this leads to.
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RusskyHoya
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In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
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Post by RusskyHoya on Feb 28, 2015 21:29:04 GMT -5
Thinking about it a bit further, I have to believe that any difference in 'compelling message' coming from McDonough with regard to annual giving has more to do with the personality of Frank Rienzo - and, more importantly, the dawn of For Generations To Come - than with any strategic or programmatic shift in the AD approach or leadership. I've been told that the previous SOP could hardly be called a model, and given what I know about Muir's efforts, that sounds about right. One does not remain at the head of Stanford's athletic department for long if one is not thoroughly versed in best practices. Between Old-School McDonough and Bernard Muir, I'm strongly inclined to think that the latter (and, heck, Porterfield and Reed too) was the more progressive and rational regime. I have no doubt that For Generations To Come has diverted more than a few significant donations that would've otherwise ended up in McDonough's coffers. And you know know what? I think, in the grand scheme of things, that's probably OK. Or even not just OK, but ultimately for the best. I would like them to publish more statistics around how they measured those categories. I don't think "new letterman donors" should be rewarded. This looks like the fix is in for where they want the money to go. I think these types of stunts actually turn people off from donating at all. I give a donation back during football season of a sizable amount then they do this and want more but don't count what I already gave. I decide next fall not to donate as I'm waiting for the next stunt promotion but decide we can't win that anyway so they lose me altogether. That's what this leads to. If you've donated before, then you're ipso facto not the target audience of this promotion. The target, as I imagine you've gathered, was first-time donors (specifically, varsity athletes who had not previously given). The theory behind this is that people who have given once tend to give again (and again and again) at much higher rates. So, the thinking goes, the most important thing is to get their foot in the door that first time. Once they've made one donation, they will feel that they have skin in the game, and it will be easier to sell them on donating in the future. Now, I have some reason to believe - at least in certain circumstances, speaking only about Georgetown - that this may not necessarily hold. Still, given the assumptions made, the logic of these sorts of promotions is sound.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Feb 28, 2015 21:54:58 GMT -5
As for the first point, I strongly disagree. I think a marketing campaign to donors that says (for example) "our budget doesn't permit us to take a spring trip to Florida that all of our peers take, but with your $100 gift -- along with the $100 gift of 50 others -- we'll make that trip happen" is a more successful sell than is "we need your money, which will be deposited into a pool of money to support athletics generally or into the pool of money the university spends on your sport of interest."
In either model, the money is of course fungible. If swimming raises $50K, the school can use it to buy chlorine for the pool (the proverbial "necessary" expense) or pay for that "extra" spring trip. But telling donors they're paying for the "extras" works better. In other words, the two models probably make absolutely no difference substantively, since the school can allocate the budgetary dollars within the sport as it sees fit anyway, but the "additive" model (to use DFW's term) is more attractive.
The same is true with focusing donors on a general athletics fund as opposed to a sport-specific fund. Again, the money is fungible! The school could simply spend less on, say, rowing if rowing were raising oodles of money and then more and more things would be considered "extras" for fundraising purposes. And that budgetary money could be redirected elsewhere. In other words, money raised for rowing always could be used for other sports. I'm oversimplifying for effect. Of course, the budget is never going to be completely zero-sum. But it can be somewhat so, and always was.
For sure, the original Hoyas Unlimited model was unnecessarily convoluted and logistically outdated. But from a marketing standpoint -- and a volunteer engagement standpoint -- it was actually well ahead of its time and extraordinarily progressive. Schools -- private schools in particular -- emulated it. A "one fund" philosophy is absolutely right for Stanford -- where the school fully funds its sports -- but an additive marketing model is absolutely right for a school, like Georgetown, that doesn't. Changing that model may have made sense in a "this isn't how most schools do it" sense, but a best practice in one context is the worst kind of conservative group-think in another. It was, in my view, a mistake, and has led to increased donor confusion on the annual level.
As to the second point, I certainly agree with most of what you say. That is, it can't hurt to get a new donor in the door, can it? Trying to turn that first-time donor into a consistent donor is the arc of the covenant of the annual fundraising industry. If you can figure out how to do it, you are invincible. Georgetown -- and all organizations -- struggle with it. But running a challenge of this kind, which is merely a marketing tool -- nothing more, serves the necessary end of getting people started. No donors (at least in the statistically meaningful sense) are turned off by it.
Finally, Rusky, while I agree that the University needs to have big-picture priorities and needs to steer donors toward them, in the spirit of "money is fungible," it should never encourage someone who might give $5M to athletics to instead give $3M to the sciences because that is the need of the moment.
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RusskyHoya
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In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
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Post by RusskyHoya on Mar 4, 2015 23:44:18 GMT -5
As for the first point, I strongly disagree. I think a marketing campaign to donors that says (for example) "our budget doesn't permit us to take a spring trip to Florida that all of our peers take, but with your $100 gift -- along with the $100 gift of 50 others -- we'll make that trip happen" is a more successful sell than is "we need your money, which will be deposited into a pool of money to support athletics generally or into the pool of money the university spends on your sport of interest." I must say right here that there is a significant difference between saying money is simply McDonough's or the University's to do with as they please, as compared to giving to a specific team. No one is proposing to do away with the latter and replacing it with the former. It's more a question of how granular a team must be in reporting what, exactly, it is that donations are going toward. That reporting carries a burden, among other things. In either model, the money is of course fungible. If swimming raises $50K, the school can use it to buy chlorine for the pool (the proverbial "necessary" expense) or pay for that "extra" spring trip. But telling donors they're paying for the "extras" works better. In other words, the two models probably make absolutely no difference substantively, since the school can allocate the budgetary dollars within the sport as it sees fit anyway, but the "additive" model (to use DFW's term) is more attractive. That's not entirely accurate. If a gift is restricted, then it is not perfectly fungible, even within a particular account. There was actually a somewhat infamous lawsuit (since settled) between GULC and disgraced alumnus Scott Ginsburg on this topic. In other words, if you give that money to swimming for that "extra" spring trip, and the spring trip has to be canceled, the team can't simply reprogram it to fill whatever new needs exist. All sorts of complications start to arise when you start attaching conditions to every gift (man, you would not believe some of the stories I've heard out of Advancement). All things being equal, unrestricted gifts are easier and preferred. Of course, you argument is that all things are not equal, as stated below... The same is true with focusing donors on a general athletics fund as opposed to a sport-specific fund. Again, the money is fungible! The school could simply spend less on, say, rowing if rowing were raising oodles of money and then more and more things would be considered "extras" for fundraising purposes. And that budgetary money could be redirected elsewhere. In other words, money raised for rowing always could be used for other sports. I'm oversimplifying for effect. Of course, the budget is never going to be completely zero-sum. But it can be somewhat so, and always was. That's true as far as it goes, which is to say that "if rowing were raising oodles of money," then the University could repurpose some of its general University funding (the majority of such fungible funds are not philanthropic [donations], but programmatic [Athletics and general University funds] toward other pursuits. The obvious problem with this is that it essentially penalizes success in fundraising: "Oh, you raised all this money? Great! We're going to take it away and give it to field hockey!" That's not exactly a positive incentive. Considering that it's one big entity, you would be amazed at how non-fungible or non-transferable (at least, not readily so) money within the University can be. For sure, the original Hoyas Unlimited model was unnecessarily convoluted and logistically outdated. But from a marketing standpoint -- and a volunteer engagement standpoint -- it was actually well ahead of its time and extraordinarily progressive. Schools -- private schools in particular -- emulated it. A "one fund" philosophy is absolutely right for Stanford -- where the school fully funds its sports -- but an additive marketing model is absolutely right for a school, like Georgetown, that doesn't. Changing that model may have made sense in a "this isn't how most schools do it" sense, but a best practice in one context is the worst kind of conservative group-think in another. It was, in my view, a mistake, and has led to increased donor confusion on the annual level. I can't really speak to the donor confusion issue - what is the confusion, exactly? However, as discussed above, the additive model has its own drawbacks in addition to its benefits. Insofar as Georgetown typically subscribes to the philosophy of "copy your (desired) peers" and "fake it til' you make it," moving to a more unrestricted (though still differentiated by sport) annual giving model makes sense. How successful it has been is not something I've seen data on, but I feel like we would've heard something if it were tanking as a model. Finally, Rusky, while I agree that the University needs to have big-picture priorities and needs to steer donors toward them, in the spirit of "money is fungible," it should never encourage someone who might give $5M to athletics to instead give $3M to the sciences because that is the need of the moment. I have never been directly privy to those types of conversations - way above my paygrade - but I am quite certain that that's not how that sort of conversation goes. If someone really wants to donate to athletics, or to football, or to the Department of Classics, they're certainly welcome to. We launch like a half-dozen new damn research centers a year because of the inability to say no to donations of this sort. I think it quite likely, however, that for the last few years, someone coming in from a position of "I want to make a high-impact donation to athletics/football/lacrosse" has been steered to - or at least had suggested to them - the Thompson Center, rather than the MSF or general programmatic funds. And someone coming in from a position of "I want to make a high-impact donation" will have been pointed toward a number of different places (including the Thompson Center) before the topic of Athletics writ large, or specific sports, comes up.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 5, 2015 9:45:35 GMT -5
As for the first point, I strongly disagree. I think a marketing campaign to donors that says (for example) "our budget doesn't permit us to take a spring trip to Florida that all of our peers take, but with your $100 gift -- along with the $100 gift of 50 others -- we'll make that trip happen" is a more successful sell than is "we need your money, which will be deposited into a pool of money to support athletics generally or into the pool of money the university spends on your sport of interest." I must say right here that there is a significant difference between saying money is simply McDonough's or the University's to do with as they please, as compared to giving to a specific team. No one is proposing to do away with the latter and replacing it with the former. It's more a question of how granular a team must be in reporting what, exactly, it is that donations are going toward. That reporting carries a burden, among other things. In either model, the money is of course fungible. If swimming raises $50K, the school can use it to buy chlorine for the pool (the proverbial "necessary" expense) or pay for that "extra" spring trip. But telling donors they're paying for the "extras" works better. In other words, the two models probably make absolutely no difference substantively, since the school can allocate the budgetary dollars within the sport as it sees fit anyway, but the "additive" model (to use DFW's term) is more attractive. That's not entirely accurate. If a gift is restricted, then it is not perfectly fungible, even within a particular account. There was actually a somewhat infamous lawsuit (since settled) between GULC and disgraced alumnus Scott Ginsburg on this topic. In other words, if you give that money to swimming for that "extra" spring trip, and the spring trip has to be canceled, the team can't simply reprogram it to fill whatever new needs exist. All sorts of complications start to arise when you start attaching conditions to every gift (man, you would not believe some of the stories I've heard out of Advancement). All things being equal, unrestricted gifts are easier and preferred. Of course, you argument is that all things are not equal, as stated below... The same is true with focusing donors on a general athletics fund as opposed to a sport-specific fund. Again, the money is fungible! The school could simply spend less on, say, rowing if rowing were raising oodles of money and then more and more things would be considered "extras" for fundraising purposes. And that budgetary money could be redirected elsewhere. In other words, money raised for rowing always could be used for other sports. I'm oversimplifying for effect. Of course, the budget is never going to be completely zero-sum. But it can be somewhat so, and always was. That's true as far as it goes, which is to say that "if rowing were raising oodles of money," then the University could repurpose some of its general University funding (the majority of such fungible funds are not philanthropic [donations], but programmatic [Athletics and general University funds] toward other pursuits. The obvious problem with this is that it essentially penalizes success in fundraising: "Oh, you raised all this money? Great! We're going to take it away and give it to field hockey!" That's not exactly a positive incentive. Considering that it's one big entity, you would be amazed at how non-fungible or non-transferable (at least, not readily so) money within the University can be. For sure, the original Hoyas Unlimited model was unnecessarily convoluted and logistically outdated. But from a marketing standpoint -- and a volunteer engagement standpoint -- it was actually well ahead of its time and extraordinarily progressive. Schools -- private schools in particular -- emulated it. A "one fund" philosophy is absolutely right for Stanford -- where the school fully funds its sports -- but an additive marketing model is absolutely right for a school, like Georgetown, that doesn't. Changing that model may have made sense in a "this isn't how most schools do it" sense, but a best practice in one context is the worst kind of conservative group-think in another. It was, in my view, a mistake, and has led to increased donor confusion on the annual level. I can't really speak to the donor confusion issue - what is the confusion, exactly? However, as discussed above, the additive model has its own drawbacks in addition to its benefits. Insofar as Georgetown typically subscribes to the philosophy of "copy your (desired) peers" and "fake it til' you make it," moving to a more unrestricted (though still differentiated by sport) annual giving model makes sense. How successful it has been is not something I've seen data on, but I feel like we would've heard something if it were tanking as a model. Finally, Rusky, while I agree that the University needs to have big-picture priorities and needs to steer donors toward them, in the spirit of "money is fungible," it should never encourage someone who might give $5M to athletics to instead give $3M to the sciences because that is the need of the moment. I have never been directly privy to those types of conversations - way above my paygrade - but I am quite certain that that's not how that sort of conversation goes. If someone really wants to donate to athletics, or to football, or to the Department of Classics, they're certainly welcome to. We launch like a half-dozen new damn research centers a year because of the inability to say no to donations of this sort. I think it quite likely, however, that for the last few years, someone coming in from a position of "I want to make a high-impact donation to athletics/football/lacrosse" has been steered to - or at least had suggested to them - the Thompson Center, rather than the MSF or general programmatic funds. And someone coming in from a position of "I want to make a high-impact donation" will have been pointed toward a number of different places (including the Thompson Center) before the topic of Athletics writ large, or specific sports, comes up. Thanks, Russky, for the thoughtful responses. I would only say in response that (based on my direct experience in university advancement, including at Georgetown, though admittedly not for some time now) Advancement offices frequently steer donors toward the University-level needs of the moment, and athletics projects have not been at that level of priority in quite some time (perhaps until now with the Thompson Center). Sure, if a donor has a stated desire to donate to a specific area, the school will never turn that down. But, more frequently, the donor's thoughts are inchoate, and if a donor would be willing to donate $5M to athletics or $3M to science, the school doesn't necessarily know that, and the school quite frequently will -- knowing there is some interest in science, which is a higher priority -- only permit Advancement personnel tied to science to visit with and solicit that donor, which leaves money on the table. The system makes good sense (it prevents donors from getting competing proposals and stops public in-fighting), but in a situation where athletics has been a non-priority for so long, it has given athletics the short end of the stick for some time. The donor confusion issue is hard to understand when you're actively involved in the school, or even if you're an active "fan" and well-informed. In my experience, the vast majority of alumni -- athletics or otherwise -- aren't. They're not employees, they're not on this board, maybe they check the scores of their team of interest a few times a year, but that's it. It's not that they're unwilling to donate; it's just that they have other, higher, priorities for their time. Some have been getting letters for 20 years from their sport club president and/or coach requesting gifts for "extras" and reporting how wonderful it was to have those extras. For that same time, although a "general" fund existed, it was never promoted or valued. But recently, the tone and model has changed. And to the "silent majority" of relatively uninformed donors, being asked to donate to a "general fund" or being asked to donate to support the budget can be confusing. You're right on restricted gifts being problematic if the event for which the gift was intended never occurs. But that is, frankly, rare. And it's rarer still (the law school insanity notwithstanding) that the donor will not agree to ease the restriction when that occurs.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Mar 5, 2015 11:13:37 GMT -5
You're right on restricted gifts being problematic if the event for which the gift was intended never occurs. But that is, frankly, rare. Rare. But until Georgetown speaks up, not forgotten.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 5, 2015 11:37:47 GMT -5
You're right on restricted gifts being problematic if the event for which the gift was intended never occurs. But that is, frankly, rare. Rare. But until Georgetown speaks up, not forgotten. No argument from me, DFW. Shameful. Perhaps worse: inexplicable.
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RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
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Post by RusskyHoya on Mar 8, 2015 16:52:14 GMT -5
Thanks, Russky, for the thoughtful responses. I would only say in response that (based on my direct experience in university advancement, including at Georgetown, though admittedly not for some time now) Advancement offices frequently steer donors toward the University-level needs of the moment, and athletics projects have not been at that level of priority in quite some time (perhaps until now with the Thompson Center). Sure, if a donor has a stated desire to donate to a specific area, the school will never turn that down. But, more frequently, the donor's thoughts are inchoate, and if a donor would be willing to donate $5M to athletics or $3M to science, the school doesn't necessarily know that, and the school quite frequently will -- knowing there is some interest in science, which is a higher priority -- only permit Advancement personnel tied to science to visit with and solicit that donor, which leaves money on the table. The system makes good sense (it prevents donors from getting competing proposals and stops public in-fighting), but in a situation where athletics has been a non-priority for so long, it has given athletics the short end of the stick for some time. The donor confusion issue is hard to understand when you're actively involved in the school, or even if you're an active "fan" and well-informed. In my experience, the vast majority of alumni -- athletics or otherwise -- aren't. They're not employees, they're not on this board, maybe they check the scores of their team of interest a few times a year, but that's it. It's not that they're unwilling to donate; it's just that they have other, higher, priorities for their time. Some have been getting letters for 20 years from their sport club president and/or coach requesting gifts for "extras" and reporting how wonderful it was to have those extras. For that same time, although a "general" fund existed, it was never promoted or valued. But recently, the tone and model has changed. And to the "silent majority" of relatively uninformed donors, being asked to donate to a "general fund" or being asked to donate to support the budget can be confusing. You're right on restricted gifts being problematic if the event for which the gift was intended never occurs. But that is, frankly, rare. And it's rarer still (the law school insanity notwithstanding) that the donor will not agree to ease the restriction when that occurs. Yea, I mean, I think we're basically in agreement. If the donor's thoughts are inchoate - or, more likely, (s)he simply wants to do whatever is both most impactful for the University and also is something that can be shown off for a long time - it's hard to fault the University for emphasizing its institutional priorities. If nothing else, the priorities will most likely already have plans, or at least a solid pitch, in place. Once we've hit 7-digits, donors are going to want a real good story on what the University is doing with that money, and specifics require time, money, and effort to put together. Obviously, if a donor is committed to something, the University will almost always put in the work to accommodate them. But you're quite right that, all things being equal, there's a bias toward what's already in the hopper. Given your explanation regarding confusion, I don't really disagree. That's on McDonough and the Office of Advancement - there's hardly a non-profit in America that doesn't have an annual giving general fund, so if they haven't explained the concept well enough or convincingly enough, then to me that's less a criticism of the concept than it is of its application. Anyway, restricted gifts generally carry all sorts of reporting requirements, accounting intricacies, and added administrative cost. Obviously, they are far lower when we're talking about concrete projects that are already further along. But, again, it's up to the coaches, fundraisers, and administrators to make that point, and to recognize and reward donors accordingly. Rare. But until Georgetown speaks up, not forgotten. No argument from me, DFW. Shameful. Perhaps worse: inexplicable. There are few things that are truly inexplicable, of course. I'd like to think that I offered an explanation here that came pretty close to the mark. In retrospect, it may be that the Bob Benson/Kevin Kelly transition was far more meaningful and disruptive than we thought at the time. The next Campus Plan - this one intended for a 20-year duration - is starting to take shape. Watch that space, as it should provide the best (or only) vantage point into the MSF's status. Although fundraising on the Thompson Center continues, it is now a done deal. McDonough is surely thinking about what its next top priorities are. Renovation of McDonough is surely one, although the necessity of keeping that facility online throughout should result in a relatively modest scope of work. Depending on what happens with the Boathouse - another star-crossed signature Athletics capital project - the MSF could well be next in line.
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