Tonight I finished up my research on thank you letters and solicitation language for donors, as well as my required hours for this mentorship. I researched more solicitation letters for finding donors to give to athletics. I found a few good examples and templates for these letters from other programs that I think would work well for DU. I have included these letters, along with some general tips for thank you letters, on my projects page of this website. Some other suggestions include asking donors to share their donation on social media. This will help make other people aware of the fund and the need and encourage them to donate as well. Everyone likes to hop onto a good bandwagon. Another tip is to keep the thank you letter separate from a donation receipt. Truly make them feel good about their donation and generosity, and give a sincere thank you. Including a real signature is also important, whether it is a thank you letter or solicitation letter. There were many other suggestions I found, but these are the important and more popular ones. All of these tips, along with examples and templates for thank you letters and solicitation letters were put into a folder in dropbox and shared with the development assistant at DU.
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I spent a few hours this evening looking for more examples or templates of donor thank you letters for college athletics. Another tip or suggestion that I found was to send messages through email, and specifically a video message. This may not be good for the older population, but for the younger alumni or donors, who live in a world of social media and engaging videos, this may be a good option. You could design one general thank you message, or produce multiple videos from each program using the athletes from the sport. These would be sent to donors who give to specific programs. This is a big undertaking, but one that would be really beneficial to the athletics program in gaining repeat donors. For the older generations, a mailed letter or card is still the better way to go, but again, these could include pictures as well. I found a few letters with different language, including “seeing your gift arrive brightened my day.” Even just changing a few lines in the old letters could be very beneficial, so it doesn’t start with just a simple thank you. Again, it is important to include in the letter or message just what or who the donation is going to impact.
By going to the Summit Athletic Media website, I was able to find a few more schools that utilized their services on the fundraising websites. A few of them aren’t necessarily Ivy League, or even similar schools to DU; however, they still showcase well-designed websites for athletic fundraising that DU can go off of. Duquesne Dukes in Pittsburgh has a site for their athletics facility renovation project. The main page has a great video and project plan for the renovations. They are fundraising for a renovations on multiple facilities that will impact and benefit the entire athletic community.
The University of Massachusetts Minutemen is another school using Summit Athletic Media for their fundraising club website. Great visuals and layout of their site, with impact of funds on the home page, including athletic development, excellence fund for student-athletes (academic support, behavioral health & wellness, sports performance, sports medicine, student-athlete development and facilities), sport-specific giving, and capital projects (facility enhancements). All the necessary information for donors to find out more is easily found. Lastly, the University of Minnesota Gophers is another client of Summit Athletic Media. Their separate donor website features a great layout and visuals as well, with how a donation will impact student-athletes. They also include a video of their capital projects. I like that they include the amount of money they are hoping to raise ($166 million) and how much they have already raised ($113.5 million). They have links to their specific capital projects and renovations, along with the different donor opportunities and levels. I broke my day up today by researching in the morning, taking a break for the afternoon, and doing more research this evening. Going through my list of schools, I have found very few that have well-designed support/giving webpages. However, University of the Pacific is one I found that was designed by Youtech & Associates. They also have a separate website for their fundraising page, the Pacific Athletic Foundation. Again, bright and bold with rotating pictures on the main page. Buttons at the top to guide you to more information, including the mission and impact of the foundation, benefits, different opportunities to give, the fund drive and what it is, and the orange and black ball event. The home page has information on membership events that are coming up, recent news for the athletics department, and their social media feeds. They have a clear mission, information about endowments, what the goals and impact will be for the 19-20 school year, and member levels and benefits. When I wasn’t having any luck finding more schools on my list with good websites, I decided to go to the designer websites to see what other schools were in their portfolio. Summit Athletic Media had quite a few, which I will research next time.
Today I spent more time conducting research on the language of letters, and specifically solicitation letters. These were also hard to find, as many of the letters I found were either for youth sports or clubs, and they are very specific in letters as to what they need funds for. Whereas a general solicitation letter for college athletics may need funds for capital projects, or just for endowments for scholarships, team equipment/uniforms, coach recruitment, etc. The need will change all the time, and there may not be enough time to change the letters all the time. However, it would make for a better letter if the solicitation for donations was specific to what the funds will be used for (i.e. capital project). One of the other suggestions that I saw many times, besides making it personal, is to include stories about the team and/or individuals on the team and how it has or could impact them. Being specific about the impact reaches more individuals on a personal level and makes them want to donate, or donate again. Even better are the letters that come from athletes themselves and request donations or sponsorships on their behalf. Or even just including a photo of that athlete in the letter would be beneficial.
Another task I was assigned with for the development department was to research and try to find other donor thank you letters or solicitation letters. DU has been using the same format and language of letters for many years, and they are wanting to update or change the language. They want something new and fresh to grab people’s attention, instead of sending the same thing numerous times. So I spent time today trying to find thank you letters to donors that other schools are using, which are not plentiful. Most of the letters I found started off with “[o]n behalf of [school/team name], we would like to extend a big thank you for your donation,” which is exactly the type of letter that DU uses. So most schools are sending the same letter with the same language to all of its donors. This is what DU is trying to get away from and freshen it up. There are plenty of sites that give tips and suggestions for sending well-written thank you letters, and the biggest suggestion is to make it personal. They suggest writing notes to each individual that donates and tell them a story about their donation and how it will directly impact one team or one individual on a team. This is not exactly feasible at a university that receives thousands of donations in one year or season. This research may take a little longer than I thought.
Today I researched more college athletic websites for their donor/giving pages. The Mercer University Bears, in Macon, Georgia, is one I found today. They are another Division I private school with an endowment of $329 million. They have a direct, easy-to-find link, for their athletic foundation from their main athletics page. While their main athletics page is designed by Sidearm Sports, their foundation website is done by AthleticOffice. The foundation site is bold, bright, and has good visuals. There are buttons at the top to find more information on different donor programs, membership benefits, endowments, and a social page. The main page has an overview with a clear mission for the foundation, which is to raise funds for scholarships, facility upgrades, and recruit and retain the top coaches. It also shows past and current projects for athletics and how you can contribute. Overall, I really like the design and visuals.
Another school I found that has a great donor fund website is Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Also another private Division I school, but their endowment is at $11 billion. The Wildcat Fund has a direct link to their support page, like Mercer, and it is easy to find from their athletic website. The main page has a few news stories with photos of current campaigns. The buttons on the top take you to their current priorities and projects. More detailed information on the wildcat fund and the opportunities to donate, with benefits of donating. There is also a link to the Otto Graham Society, which is their leadership club for annual donors. When going to their capital projects pages, there are great videos and photos of their proposed facilities. Again, another good quality website designed by Summit Athletic Media. I finished up my marketing research today on gymnastics programs and attendance. I looked into the gymnastics programs and promotions at LSU, UCLA, Florida, and Utah. I found that LSU does a lot with their social media sites and offer promotions for people that follow their pages. They do a t-shirt toss at all of their home meets for their fans. During one meet, they celebrate their champions by dropping their banners, which brings in a lot of fans. Some other promotions at LSU include girl scouts ability to join team on floor during warm ups, free food for students, free pink and blue shirts to celebrate cancer awareness, using a rewards program for students to earn points for attending, trading card giveaway, and Mardi Gras night (mardi gras leos, clear bag giveaway). UCLA does a lot of giveaways (posters, team cards, pins, bracelets, tote bags), free or discounted tickets for groups (faculty/staff, girl scouts, gymnastics clubs, alumni, school classrooms, first responders), post-meet autographs and photo sessions, book signings, junior squad performances. Florida dims the lights and does a floor projection for intros; they have a Kids Corner with games and prizes, tattoos, hair glitter and ribbon; fans are given 10.0 cards at all home meets; they use t-shirt cannons; they have multiple sponsors that offer free food or prizes (gift cards, seat upgrades). They engage fans by putting cards under seats to create a card stunt. Lastly, Utah runs their meets a little differently than most school by performing each event one at a time, instead of rotations at the same time. And they still manage to finish the meet within 2 hours. Like Florida, they also offer a KidsZone. Their intro is exciting as they use fireworks and flames for their intro. Student admission is free and they offer a free non-student guest admission as well. They giveaway shirts, magnets, car decals, trading cards, mini teddy bears, and light sticks. They offer autograph sessions, discounted tickets for faculty/staff, and different theme nights, including character day. Utah’s Instagram photos are also really good quality, fun and exciting.
I continued my search for more donor club websites and interactive and engaging websites. The Appalachian State Mountaineers have a great website, which was also done by Summit Athletic Media like the UNC Rams Club. The website opens with a great visual and big bright colors and letters. It has large buttons to their two big projects currently, as well as the impact of your donation. They can’t be missed. If you scroll down, it shows great drawings of the projects and links to find out more information. It doesn’t have a lot of wordiness to overwhelm viewers. It is done well. Boston College is another school that has a decent website for donors to learn more information. It is not as interactive and engaging as Appalachian State. However, it has some good visuals and information about their campaign projects and stories of impact. Columbia is another one designed by Summit Athletic Media. Again, great visual, not too wordy, great flow, easy to find information, and they list their current campaigns. I tried to find more Ivy League schools with these types of websites, but again, I did not have much luck. It’s almost as if the Ivy Leagues don’t need to have anything fancy to attract donors because of the name and reputation of the school already.
Today I looked for more schools that have separate donor club websites linked from their athletics page. I was surprised to find how few schools really have any sort of donor club memberships or pages to find more information about donating to athletics at all. Quite a few schools had a link to a donor page that only offered you to put in a donation amount and pick a sport or club and submit, without any information at all. Davidson and Wake Forest had pretty basic giving pages with little information, each designed by Sidearm Sports and WildFire Designs, respectively. They both had their paper membership pamphlets uploaded as PDFs, but Davidson’s was from 2015 and it was very wordy. Davidson also had separate donor clubs for football (Gridiron) and basketball (Fast Break) instead of just one large club for all of athletics. Wake Forest’s page is a little more professional and gives more information for what the funds would go towards, including capital projects. They also listed benefits for people that do give, as well as tax questions and answers. However, their site was also pretty wordy and not enough pictures or video to draw people in. Neither of them had engaging websites. The Rice Owls website was similar to Wake Forest, with a little more visuals to look at. A good amount of information, along with a good list of capital projects. Their endowment is quite a bit larger than DU’s though, at $6.3 billion compared to $700 million.
I worked on some more market research for gymnastics programs and attendance today. I looked into attendance numbers for top gymnastics programs in the country, including LSU, Oklahoma, Georgia, UCLA, Florida, and Utah. I included Utah because when looking up average attendance numbers, they top the charts at over 15,000 people per meet on average. DU’s average attendance is about 2,700. I began with Oklahoma and Georgia and found their current or most recent promotional calendar for gymnastics to see what kinds of events or activities they do to attract fans. I could not find a promotional calendar for Oklahoma, but I did find a short list of general promotions and giveaways that they do, including t-shirts, light-up items, gum, enter to win OU leo, prize packs of favorite items of team members, pillow cases, enter to win onesie, superhero capes, and chapstick for OU students. They also have a KidsZone that includes free face painting, balloons, photo booths, $2 tickets for kids, petting zoo, postmeet autographs, pajama day, and costume competitions. Last year they offered a Cyber Monday ticket deal with tickets priced at $5 or $25 for season tickets. Georgia’s promotions were a little more detailed and different depending on the date. They offered giveaways for the first few thousand fans to show up, discounted tickets for specific clubs or organizations (4-H, youth programs, Girl Scouts, NGC, camp participants, etc.). They also had different gymnastics clubs perform prior to the meets. What I also found is that they do a lot of pre-meet or in-meet promotions and contests to keep fans engaged. For example, they had text to win gift cards during the meet. Or handstand contests to win prizes. Local restaurants offered free meals if the Georgia team scored at least a 49.0 on vault, or 9.9 on bars.
This morning I met with Brandon Macneill, Associate Vice Chancellor for External Affairs, to discuss how I can contribute to development. The tasks he gave to me are all tasks I can do at home again, researching other schools and their athletics websites, specifically their development/support pages. DU currently still mails out their annual donor membership guide, which accounts for ⅓ of their annual budget. Instead of mailing so many out to people that more than likely don’t read them, what do other schools do? I am to research schools that use an interactive membership guide on their website that are more engaging for donors, and what their capital projects (facilities) are or have been, if any, and their endowments. I am also to find out what company has designed these websites as well. He would like me to focus on similar schools to DU, more of the Ivy League schools. I spent some time researching many of the private Division I schools and their athletic websites. After not having much luck with the interactive sites, I broadened my school search just to see what I could find, as most of the Ivy League athletic websites are very similar to DU. The first one I found that was really good was the University of North Carolina Rams Club. Their site is very informative, engaging, easy to follow, and put together really well. I will use this site as the basis for the rest of my research.
I spent another day conducting more research for marketing. I spent a short time searching for more hockey breast cancer awareness nights, but didn’t find anything more than what I had already found a few weeks ago. So I moved onto searching for successful military appreciation nights for hockey. Again, I started with local organizations that help military veterans and families, and found a couple. The Wounded Warrior Project, Colorado Veterans Project, and Volunteers of America Colorado are all local organizations in the Denver area. I then searched for events for military appreciation and/or to raise funds for local organizations for military. Some ideas I put together include the presentation of colors by the ROTC, free tickets for military, National Anthem by an active or retired military member, puck drop by a military member. Selling t-shirts prior to the game would also raise funds. Similar to the breast cancer research, some schools have a local business donate military jerseys for the team that they can auction off to raise money. Some schools do a silent auction the night of the game. Recognition of active/retired military during halftime (and a moment of silence for those killed) should also be done.
I spent part of the day today conducting more research for marketing. I was tasked with researching hockey programs that have had success with breast cancer awareness nights, as well as military appreciation nights. I found quite a few schools that have different events to promote breast cancer awareness and fundraise for specific breast cancer organizations. Some local organizations I found in the Denver area are Colorado Cancer Foundation, American Cancer Society of Colorado, Susan G. Koman Colorado, and Colorado Cancer Coalition. I then searched for actual events and theme nights that DU could hold. A few successful events include holding a 50/50 raffle, selling t-shirts and ribbons in support of breast cancer, selling player autographed hockey pucks, and auctioning off pink jerseys that a local business has sponsored or donated to the program. This last event is a popular one and has raised thousands of dollars for local organizations. Another one that I really like that I think would do really well is to have each player on the team play in honor of someone they know that has or had cancer, and they spend the weeks or months before the event raising funds in their honor. They can create a website with pictures of the player and honoree with the option for people to read about them and donate.
Today I finished up my compliance hours by looking over the NCAA Division I Manual. I went over the agenda for the regional rules seminar and some of the notes that I took, and looked up the bylaws in the NCAA Manual to read over the rules some more, including recruiting and financial aid. I then spent some time going through some more flagged emails in the ARMS software and making sure they were not in violation. They were all regarding camps and did not have any recruiting language. I made a note and overrode these flagged emails. I also read the rules a little more in depth for phone calls and contact with potential recruits, in regards to their time limits and number of calls per year, prior to the end of their junior year. This was a little more daunting of a task, as I am not exactly sure what the exception to this rule is. I read through quite a few but decided to ask Cody or Christina before overriding any of them. I have found that the department of compliance is a lot more involved and I am not familiar enough with the rules to provide that much help.
The final day of the NCAA regional rules seminar began at 8am again. I started my day with a Division III session, since working for a DIII school in the future may be an option for me. The first session was Division III Bylaw 13 introductory concepts/overview of compliance tools (foundational). This was a short session, but informative. Next, I went to Division I academic misconduct (foundational plus), followed by association-wide national letter of intent (foundational plus), Division I recruiting (game day simulation and recruiting aids) (advanced dialogue), Division I football hot topics (advanced dialogue), Division III waivers (division-wide), and Division I rules question and answer (dialogue). Although much of what I attended today was beyond foundational, it was interesting to sit and listen to much of the dialogue and questions from the more experienced attendees. The one thing I wish I had done a better job of while there was to network and introduce myself to more people. I have never been very good at that, but there were so many people from all over the country and from so many different schools, that I really missed out on that opportunity.
The second day of the NCAA regional rules seminar began at 8am again, in which I attended the Division I recruiting (early recruiting/campus visits) session. This was a foundational plus session, so much of it was over my head, but it was still interesting. From 9am - 10am I attended the Division I legislative process/drafting 101, which was just a foundational session, so I understood a little more of it. There were no foundational sessions next, so I sat in on Division I elite athletes and national team participation (a foundational plus). Without any experience in compliance other than the few hours I have done, I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the terms that they used or the forms that they referred to a lot in this session. In the afternoon I attended Division I eligibility center hot topics: what’s new for 2019? (foundational dialogue), Division I revenue distributions and membership financial reporting (foundational), and Division I social media and technology (foundational plus). Today was much harder to focus in the sessions, as much of it I didn’t quite understand. However, I tried to listen, take notes, and learn as much as I could while there.
Today I attended the first day of the NCAA Regional Rules Seminar located here in Denver. The seminar is three full days, all of which I plan to attend. The daily schedule for the seminar is posted on the projects page of this website. There were multiple lectures to choose from throughout the three days, depending on your level of experience with compliance and NCAA rules. The sessions were divided into three levels, foundational (entry level), foundational plus (a few years experience), and advanced (many years of experience). I went to all of the foundational lectures, as I am new to compliance and don’t have any experience. There were also some lectures that allowed for dialogue and advanced dialogue between the presenters and the attendees. Today was mostly for everyone to be together in the welcome reception/lecture and it was a Division I welcome to the world of compliance from 8am - Noon. From 1pm - 4:30pm, we could choose between the world of academics or the world of rules and enforcement. I chose to attend the Division I welcome to the world of rules and enforcement, which focused on bylaws related to athletics personnel, amateurism, recruiting, financial aid, awards and benefits, and playing and practice seasons. Overall, it was a very informative day.
Today was another day of three graduations at DU; however, I was only able to attend and help out with the evening ceremony. The ceremonies were scheduled for 9am, 2pm, and 7pm today with three schools from the same district, Denver Public Schools (DPS). I arrived prior to doors opening at 6pm for guests, so set up was already taken care of again. Although DPS has been doing their graduation ceremonies at DU for many years as well, they are much more laid back and also unorganized compared to Cherry Creek School District. DPS likes to hold a one hour rehearsal for students and staff prior to doors opening. By the time I had arrived, they were running through it a second time and were still having issues with what direction to go and leave and where people were supposed to sit. They had to run through a third time as guests were entering to find their seat. It was a much different feel than the week before. This class was half the size of the previous schools I covered last week, but the ceremony was just as long as the class with 500 students. At the end of the evening, we cleaned up the staging area in the other gym by putting away a few tables and chairs. The rest was for the conversion crew to clean up.
Today was a long day of graduations, beginning at 6am at DU. The first of three high school graduations was scheduled for 8am, with doors opening at 7am. When I arrived at 6am, the stage, chairs, and tables had all been set up by the conversion crew the night before, so there wasn’t a lot of set up to do. It was mostly just making sure the appropriate signs were up outside to direct people to the right places, as well as show people prohibited items not allowed inside. Staff and security was all in place and ready to go. We were there to take care of people’s needs and make sure that everything ran smoothly. The three schools that held graduation today had been doing so at DU for many years and they are all in the same district, so they used the same layout every year. There were a few minor changes with chairs between each ceremony, but nothing big. The second and third ceremonies was scheduled at noon and 4pm, respectively, with doors opening for guests one hour prior. So it basically gave each school 3 hours for the ceremony, gathering of items, and clean up before opening doors for the next group. With each school having approximately 500 students in their graduation classes, it was quite impressive to see names being called by four different people and sections and be finished within two hours.
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AuthorMichelle Taylor |