March Madness and Young Alumni

In an interesting combination of fundraising, young alumni relations, and March’s annual basketball tournament, the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia has developed an innovative competition to benefit their program. With an annual fund of approximately $2.5 million, the McIntire School of Commerce is like many athletics department annual funds in that it seeks new ways to engage its young alumni.

Called the Young Alumni McIntire Madness Challenge, the School of Commerce has created a “bracket” where different classes of alumni are competing against each other to “advance” to their next match-up. With graduate and undergraduate teams from each year (starting in 2002), the teams compete based on participation in the McIntire annual fund.  At current standing, the class of 2008 leads the tournament with participation at 18.7%.

Young alumni are a traditionally difficult group to engage, especially for athletics departments. In this type of campaign, Virginia is using a iconic sporting event to generate a competition that encourages participation over giving amount. This effort could easily be carried over to an athletics annual fund, looking to engage their recent alumni. Sports fans are all engaged with the NCAA Tournament, and the concept of an alumni bracket would be easy to understand and implement.

Rob Norris

Special thanks to Christina Wright, Ohio University Sports Administration Graduate Student