4 Technology Tools Development Officers Should Use

Summer is typically a time when a development officer can focus a little more on professional development instead of rushing around to a full schedule of games and events. In an effort to utilize more of these opportunities, here are five technology tools all development officers should think about using:

Google Alerts - These allow a development officer to get a daily or weekly e-mail with the top search engine hits pertaining to that keyword. Great keywords to use would be a high-end prospect’s name or company, names of current donors, or even your school’s name.

Goodsearch.org - This is website that donates portions of its proceeds back towards charities for every search made. While this will likely not result in a large amount of money raised for your school, it can result in some incremental cash that could enhance the current fund. Simply register your charity or non-profit and then spread the word to your co-workers and supporters. The more people who search who are affiliated with your school, the more money to be directed your way.

Twitter – While it is not necessary for a development office to manage its own Twitter account, there should be some effort to get your school’s message out to the masses through this new media. By using personalities with more star appeal, your message can be carried out to a wider audience of prospects.

Google Voice – This new technology was just opened to the masses and is a big help in organizing and managing multiple voicemail inboxes. Some of the main features include transcribing voicemails into text and e-mail, allowing certain calls to ring multiple telephone numbers, and personalized greetings for those VIP callers, and many others.

Taylor Wood

Conference Realignment and Athletics Development

I was tempted throughout the past week to write a post on conference realignment and what could happen to the development offices of those schools. While I am sure that we have not heard the last of this, it appears that the scene has settled for a while with only Nebraska and Colorado leaving the Big 12 and Boise State moving to the Mountain West.

Throughout this process, athletics development offices in the moving schools are more than likely geared up in an external public relations campaign, educating their donors on the processes for switching conferences and dealing with questions. The University of Colorado posted this lengthy article to laud their role as the “first domino to fall.” The piece includes quotes from the athletics director as well as University President and Regents. The article is complete with a video and reasoning behind the move.

The University of Nebraska has approached the situation similarly, placing video of press conferences as well as releasing this lengthy article on the move to the Big 10. It includes quotes from numerous others around the nation congratulating the Cornhuskers on their move.

Boise State has also placed video of the Mountain West press conference on their site and sent out this press release to begin educating their fans and donors on their new opponents.

It remains to be seen the next steps necessary in the conference realignment process. From the donor perspective, there will be plenty of changes in the opponents on the field and their travel. For some, it may include a reduction in their gifts if they disagree with the move. However, for the most part, those loyal to the school will continue to support their school. To some extent, it is exciting to see the new conferences and think about how Nebraska, Colorado and Boise State will compete. Donors are sure to enjoy the new match ups and rivalries.

Taylor Wood

Selling the New Cowboys Stadium

Recently, the Ohio University Center for Sports Administration held its 38th Annual Sports Administration Symposium.  One of the featured speakers, Chad Estis, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Dallas Cowboys New Stadium, was kind enough to share his experiences in selling tickets, suites, and other gameday packages.  Specifically, Estis addressed the way he and his whole staff  were able to go after the entire Dallas market in an efficient and calculated process.

Throughout the whole process of going after new clients, the Cowboys used a CRM system.  Although basic in its applications, the Cowboys were diligent in the use of the system.  Every potential season ticket holder was entered in the system, ensuring complete understanding of where each potential client was in the purchasing process.  Also, Estis emphasized the ability to “manage-up” with CRM data, helping him describe to upper management where his team was with consumers.

Additionally, Estis explained the significant boost in consumer awareness the Cowboys were able to receive through their partnership with Channel1media.  Through Channel1media, Cowboy fans were allowed to get a complete view of their seat before purchase.  From there, Estis and his team were empowered with the selling of something tangible that the consumer had actually seen and experienced (virtually).

Most offices have a donor tracking software, but accurate management by the entire staff will make the operation that much more efficient.  There are also companies such as Ballena Technologies that can build virtual models of stadium for premium seating opportunities.  Overall, some of the same practices that helped the Cowboys go after the Dallas market can be applied to collegiate athletics development.  Whether it be keeping track of the stewardship process of donors through a CRM system, or using interactive web applications to help validate seat license purchases.

Michael Speight

Using Social Media effectively in your athletics department

John Calipari has 328 times more twitter followers than the entire University of Kentucky account does.

When looking at the application of social media and athletics development, it is important to note one trend that is emerging amongst internet followers–they follow people, not companies or organizations. If one looks at the top 20 twitter accounts with the largest amount of followers, only one is a company (@cnnbrk), and there are only six organizations in the top 40.

What can be deduced from this information is that people are interested in using social media to track their friends, family and other personalities, not necessarily corporations or businesses. When applying this knowledge to athletics development, it is important to recognize those in the athletics department with the largest name appeal and following. For instance, @UKCoachCalipari has 1.1 million followers. The official University of Kentucky account (@universityofky) has only 2,800 followers.

In addition, many coaches are now hosting their own sites, such as Tom Izzo at Michigan State and Nick Saban at Alabama. While the main purpose of these sites may be recruiting, there does remain a possibility to utilize these sites and personalities to raise funds for the athletics department. In some cases, the person does not even need to be real. The University of Wyoming has created a Facebook page for Cowboy Joe, their official mascot. To date, the page has garnered ~1,200 friends and followers.

Simple links stating, “Give to Athletics” or “Facility Expansion” can serve to increase the awareness of mission of purpose of each fundraising arm. Using the departments largest personalities can at times be a challenge, but everyone can stand to benefit from a personal appeal from a celebrity personality.

Taylor Wood

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Diversity in the Development Workplace: The NAADD Diversity Initiative

The official release regarding the call for applications for this year’s National Association of Athletic Development Directors (NAADD) Diversity Initiative came out recently, and as a past recipient, I thought I would do my best to promote and recommend development officers, interns, and graduate assistants to apply for this award.

As a recipient in both 2008 and 2009, I was able to attend the NACDA national conference, which is an invaluable networking opportunity and educational experience.  As is the case with all national conferences, attendees have time to attend sessions which are extremely valuable, interact with peers and potential mentors from across the nation, and conduct important business.  In addition to this, the Diversity Initiative provides a training session called “Fundamentals of Athletic Development” that pair each attendee with a mentor in the field and in peer groups of young professionals. My mentors, Kay Hargrave, Associate AD at Auburn, and Lu Merritt, Director of Athletic Development at Virginia Tech, are seasoned professionals in athletic development, and my participation afforded me an opportunity to pick their brains and profit from their experience and insight.

Furthermore, having an opportunity to interact with the NAADD Executive Committee members is an unusually neat experience.  They are clearly devoted to increasing diversity in the field of athletic development because of the amount of time they spend genuinely interacting with each participant and the large group. I can’t think of many fields where individuals who are immensely successful, and at very successful athletic programs, would not only spend their time with you and encourage your development, but also share secrets of the trade.

More information is available in the release, but individuals interested in applying for the NAADD Diversity Initiative scholarship should contact Jason Galaska, NACDA Assistant Executive Director, at jgalaska@nacda.com.  And by all means, if you have more questions regarding my experiences as a participant, please feel free to contact me at broussardw@nsula.edu.

Dr. William Broussard

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What’s in YOUR subject line? How to increase your open rate

When sending a mass e-mail out to a large group, be it donors or season ticket holders, determining the correct subject line can play a large role in the open rate. How often will you open an e-mail that says, “Event on Tuesday” over an e-mail that claims, “Meet Head Coach on Tuesday!” My chances are with the latter.

In the February 24 edition of “Selling It,” an e-newsletter sent by the National Sports Forum, the Los Angeles Clippers‘ email strategy was described in detail and its application can pay dividends across the sports industry.

In an effort to grow their e-mail open rate, the Clippers devised a plan to determine the best subject line for mass blasts. Let’s say they were going to e-mail 2,000 people who had purchased tickets in the past year to advertise a special rate. They would take 10% of those 2,000 (200 people) and divide them into five different groups of 40 each. From here, the team would devise five different subject lines and send the e-mails to the subscribers.

After waiting two hours to allow subscribers to open their messages, they checked the monitoring software for each group. The subject line with the most opens and click-throughs was determined to be the most appealing and sent to the remaining 90% (1,800) of subscribers.

This approach allowed the Clippers in increase their open rate from 8% to over 12% in a short amount of time. While this approach was designed for a ticket office, it no doubt has applications for a development operation. As e-mails become a more important part of the communication process, having the correct subject line will become increasingly important to get your message across.

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Taylor Wood

Careerball: The sport athletes play when they’re through playing sports

Review: Careerball: The sport athletes play when they’re through playing sports, by Russ Hafferkamp

Hafferkamp, Russ. (2009). Careerball: The sport athletes play when they’re through playing sports. Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing.

The quandary that many athletes face when their athletic careers end is that much of what has led to their success all of their lives, and the activity(-ies) that has consumed their lives can threaten to stall or compromise a successful transition into a career.  The author of Careerball advises former athletes to keep their heads up, work as hard as they can, and success will be theirs in the end.

A true statement, almost without exception. However, one doesn’t need to be a former athlete to appreciate this advice, or profit from it.  Much of the advice that the career coach offers in his self-published tome is so widely applicable that it is a book-long challenge to identify what Careerball actually is. It doesn’t keep the book from being an enjoyable and at most times instructive read, but I was left wanting when it came to the book’s promise to identify a particular or unique way that former athletes could successfully approach career development based on character traits they develop as athletes (that somehow, non-athletes cannot develop or share).

Hafferkamp offers sage advice, interesting considerations, and useful perspectives for student-athletes who are at a crossroads in their lives. He is the CEO of a consulting firm that specializes in career counseling for former athletes.  Sections on the unique perspective that an athlete develops, and how that shapes perspectives in ways that can be as beneficial as they are deleterious were engagingly written.  Chapters 11 and 12 focus on identity formation and transitions unique to high school and college athletics, and serve as an excellent precursor to an advice section that cites survey data from 300 former professional and collegiate athletes about athletic experiences and career development.  Sharp transitions and excellent antitheses appear sporadically (e.g. his suggestion that athletes’ focus on their craft makes them determined and mentally strong, but can also keep them from exploring other aspects of their development). Chapter 4 focuses, at one point, on stereotype threat research, which is very interesting.

However, platitudes dot the landscape of the book.  Statements such as “athletes are good at setting goals,” and “(they) don’t lose hope,” and claims that student-athletes are competitive, work well with others, and are loyal are so widely applicable that one does not have to be an athlete to identify with them.  Additionally, entire chapters that one suspects will be aimed specifically at a niche, selected audience instead reaches out to a very wide one, instead (chapters on “Personal Interests,” “Time Management,” and networking and mentorship) are not without merit, but also not germane specifically to student-athletes.

An interesting read, it is framed unfortunately as a book for former athletes on the subject of career development instead of as a book on career development that highlights ways that athletes may or may not benefit from their athletic identities.  The book’s shining moments are when his tone is reflective, even autoethnographic (as an athlete and father of an elite athlete) and less like self-help.

William Broussard, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Athletics at Northwestern State University, Louisiana.

Professional Conduct: Development Officers are Never ‘Off-Duty’

Read and pondered Ross Bjork’s post on NAADD this morning (found here: http://www.nacda.com/sports/naadd/spec-rel/020810aab.html) about professional conduct.  In it, Bjork, Senior Associate Director of Athletics at UCLA, points out that first impressions, presentation skills, and professional etiquette are all important to the work that we do, and most importantly, that “It is okay to have fun socially but be mindful of your surroundings and who is watching.”

Because first impressions create the lens through which we may be seen for an extended period of time, it’s important to keep in mind that even though we are off the clock, we’re not really ever off-duty.  Recently, I was invited to attend a gathering by a generous supporter of the program, and got to put this adage into practice.  We have a tradition down here, affiliated with Mardi Gras, called “12^th Night.” In the Catholic faith, it’s the 12^th night after Christmas, purportedly the night when the wise men first meet Jesus. In the Louisiana faith, it’s the first Mardi Gras party night of the year (officially, anyhow)!

In attendance at this party was our Athletic Board president, two other Board members, several co-workers, our largest annual donor, and many other alumni and friends of the university.  Without indemnifying anyone in particular, I’ll say that the beverages were in no short supply, and everyone was feeling A-OK.  I had a drink or two, as is my custom (there is a great John Lee Hooker tune, that I use as my guideline in such situations) and, by the end of the evening, I am certain that I was among the most sober folks in the room.  I made several visits, made some good connections, and even established a couple of follow up meetings (I had to work quickly!) and, by avoiding the temptation to follow suit and let my hair down, hopefully made a good impression on everyone in attendance (at least so far as they could remember!).

Monday morning, our largest annual donor emailed me and complimented me on my professionalism in the face of such temptation.  Actually it was a good-natured ribbing about ‘always being on the clock,’ but I figure that has to be worth something.

If nothing else, it’s better than the alternative, which could be losing the support of that donor because of actions that I may not have even remembered.

Ross says it better than I do, so please, check out his write-up on the NACDA/NAADD website:http://www.nacda.com/sports/naadd/spec-rel/020810aab.html.

William Broussard

Big 10 Development Website Evaluation

Athletics Development Frontier is proud to announce the release of their Big 10 Development Website report, an evaluation of the best practices found within the conference’s athletics development websites. Using a scorecard to evaluate all the necessary components of an effective website, Michigan State University, Purdue University, the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan were determined to be tops in the conference. Feel free to view the report in your browser by clicking on the document below. You can download and print the PDF once it has uploaded.

Feel free to contact us at twood@athleticsfrontier.com to send us any feedback you may have on the report or if you would like your own website evaluated.

Transparent ideas from the National Sports Forum

I have had the privilege to attend the National Sports Forum in Baltimore for the last two days. While the conference is more focused on sponsorship and marketing, I have found many parallels with development that can be utilized to help grow development offices.

Sponsorships

In a panel with representatives from some major sponsors in sports including Anheuser-Busch, Cintas, and Sports Clips, the consensus was do your homework and less-is-more in the early stages. Sponsors get hundreds of emails a day with ideas and proposals, but it is better to contact the sponsor after you have done extensive research into the company and ways the two brands match-up going into the future. This works the same in development. Very few schools have the luxury of getting large donations from unfamiliar figures. It is a daily challenge for fundraisers to gain the best understanding of the prospect to get the initial foot in the door. If you choose to approach the prospect via email, it isn’t going to do much good to send the large development brochure. Sum up the message into a couple of paragraphs and personalize it to that particular prospect.

New Media

New media such as Facebook and Twitter is a hot topic in sponsorship and marketing because no one has figured out how to make consistent revenue from the medium. Many development offices have dabbled in the practice, with the main goal spreading news about the offices to followers. While this can fulfill some objectives, one tactic being discussed extensively at NSF is using new media as a focus group to gain feedback. Allowing followers or fans to contribute to the school or feel as if they have insider information is a great way to build rapport with the group and gain important feedback from donors, particularly younger demographics.

Ticket Sales

Major League Baseball teams have one of the toughest tasks in attempting to sell tickets for 81 home dates between April and September. Because of this challenge, baseball teams have gotten extremely creative with season ticket holder programs. One such idea is a new customer reception at the beginning of each season. This reception not only allows the team to thank the new customer, but to also educate them. It is a great way to get in front of new customers early and ensure a relationship before renewals come up the next year. This is a strategy that can be utilized by development offices with new donors to grow their relationship but also to educate on the benefits of becoming a donor.

Sean Phifer