UA athletic department has to be 'all-in' to reach goals
The UA athletic department is advertising two fundraising jobs. Here’s the job description:
“Identify, cultivate, solicit and steward major donor prospects with the following annual goals: 225 in-person visits and a 95 percent renewal of current Wildcat Club members. Manage a donor book of 400-500 prospects and a portfolio of 25-50 prospects.”
Can there be a more difficult assignment in the athletic department?
Can there possibly be more than a handful of potential UA sports donors who are untapped?
The UA’s staff directory lists 26 people under the general description of development/fundraising. In addition, the IMG staff, which is essentially sales, lists eight full-time employees. The marketing staff has four employees. The ticket office lists eight employees.
That’s 46 people under Greg Byrne’s umbrella whose task it is to put people in the seats and keep them there. That’s 46 people working specifically toward a $75 million annual budget that the school believes could reach $100 million in the next few years.
If you think the UA’s overall development staff is large, check out the one at Washington. It has 57. Arizona State has 54.
The operative, 21st century term at the heart of all college athletic departments is “major gifts.” That’s a game-changing level at which Jeff Stevens, Cole Davis and David Lowell all have contributed more than $10 million to UA athletics in the Byrne years.
But it all starts at the bottom, and that’s getting Tucsonans to buy football tickets to watch UTSA and NAU in September. A week ago, the UA’s marketing department was honored by posterswag.com for creating one of the NCAA’s 20 most provocative football posters of 2015.
Under the theme “ONE” and “BE THERE” the school smartly chose not to hang its marketing theme on All-America linebacker Scooby Wright. Instead, it featured eight players, among them punter Drew Riggleman, kicker Casey Skowron and backup QB Jerrard Randall.
How many schools do that? Most go for star appeal. Arizona chose to follow coach Rich Rodriguez’s “all-in” platform.
Georgia Tech’s 2015 football poster features quarterback Justin Thomas. Purdue goes solo with cornerback Anthony Brown. Pitt chose to put coach Pat Narduzzi front and center, as did Boise State with coach Bryan Harsin.
Operating a college athletic department in an isolated setting like Tucson is a big-money enterprise (and getting bigger) that will always swing on the “all-in” theme.
No disrespect to Scooby (who probably doesn’t want extra attention anyway), but the UA’s marketing approach to the 2015 football season better reflects RichRod’s “pull-the-rope” theme in a business that depends on the Little Guy as much as those in the party suites.
