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

Jeremy Foley, Athletics Director at Florida, visits Ohio’s campus

Jeremy Foley has been Athletics Director at Florida since 1992.

This past week Ohio University received a visit from one of the premier athletics directors in the nation-Jeremy Foley of the University of Florida. Foley was visiting campus to receive his Medal of Merit, an honorary award presented to alumni who have achieved distinction in their professions and shown loyalty to the university.

Upon receipt of the award, Foley spoke to a crowd of 250 people on numerous topics, ranging from the culture of an organization to how people should be treated. He spoke of his own transformation as a manger, from a person who relied on his position of power early in his career to someone who treats people with respect and dignity. He spoke of the family atmosphere at Florida and how all employees must pull in the same direction, helping the entire department to reach their goals.

He mentioned that dealing with people is the biggest part of his job. Disdaining turf wars, he spoke of his high profile head coaches who still take the time to thank the staff who lines the football field or sweeps the gym floor. This requires checking your ego at the door and seeing the worth in all individuals. He was quick to mention that this does not mean there are no disagreements at Florida, but just like any family, they get together and solve them.

Billy Donovan and Urban Meyer are two of the high profile coaches that work at Florida.

Drawing upon wonderful examples for integrity and compliance, he spoke about holding his coaches and players to a high level of sportsmanship, encouraging them to give credit to the other team if they win. He repeatedly mentioned shaking their hand to congratulate them on their victory.

One of the most interesting areas Foley spoke about was the small things you can do for your organization to increase morale. At Florida, if an employee has been working at the athletics association for 10 years, they have to take a mandatory four week sabbatical to get away and re-energize themselves, similar to Nike’s policy. He mentioned how this has done wonders for the organization and the people who work there.

Foley’s speech was a model for what he sees as crucial success factors in the athletics industry: high energy, high passion, and high commitment. One needs to look no farther than Jeremy Foley’s career at the University of Florida for an example of this in action.

Reseating program aids schools, excites donors

Click on the picture for Seton Hall's interactive seating diagram

The University of Indiana has recently joined the growing number of schools who have chosen to utilize Ballena Technologies for their donor reseating and ticket sales processes. The Ballena program, which works with the university’s existing ticketing system, allows its users to access virtual seat previews, compare seat prices, and pick their seats all from the comforts of their own home. During an otherwise time-consuming reseating process, the university can now rely on this technology to distribute seats among their donors based on priority points in a real-time  and simple computer based program.

Of course, Indiana is not the only university taking advantage of this technology. Seton Hall is using Ballena for their seating diagrams that show ticket prices and donation requirements for their entire basketball arena. This gives Seton Hall fans the opportunity to calculate their own totals for basketball tickets without having to contact members of the athletics department.

ADF has posted previously on basketball reseating methods with suggestions for a hands-on and  on-site selection process along with others which are primarily priority point driven. The correct way to handle a donor reseating effort will depend largely on the university, but a department looking for online interactivity should follow the examples set by Indiana and Seton Hall.

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Rob Norris

Enhancements coming to Athletics Development Frontier

There will be some exciting new offerings coming from Athletics Development Frontier in the near future. With the site quickly approaching its one year anniversary, we will be introducing some new original content that will continue to enhance the field of athletics development.

For one, we will begin to offer an Athletics Development Frontier “Scouting Report,” which will be an e-report sent to our subscribers’ email addresses. The report will be a summary of some of the best practices we have uncovered teamed with some new original content offerings. Like any scouting report, we hope to provide you a glimpse of the strengths and weaknesses of the athletics development industry.

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Marist College leverages Super Bowl tickets to raise funds

Image via Wikipedia

Marist College recently raffled off a travel package to Super Bowl XLIV in Miami, FL in an effort to raise money for their athletics program. Tickets were available through student-athletes, coaches, and staff with the winner being announced at a basketball game on January 2.

This exceptional travel package, which included hotel, rental car, spending money, and two tickets to the game, is a worthy prize that would attract sports fans to purchase the chance to win the prize. Marist has done an excellent job leveraging their ability to secure such a travel package into actual dollars for the athletics department. This is their ninth year holding such a drawing.

Taking Marist as an example, other development offices can look to leverage their relationships and ability to purchase worthy travel prizes to raise money for their departments. If a worthy prize can be secured, having raffle tickets sold to the surrounding community can be a way to create incremental revenue for the department, as well as increase awareness of fundraising efforts.

Taylor Wood