Terps Sports

People tend to give for two reasons: 1. The school's academic reputation and 2. The school's athletic success.

UMD's academic reputation has risen significantly in the past 10-15 years, but, before that, it was a notch below the top public universities, so it doesn't have the sustained academic reputation that some of the other schools mentioned in this thread have.

We've also never had a sustained multi-decade period of success in football or men's basketball. It's always been a few years up followed by a few years down. You need long, sustained periods of success to turn casual fans into the hardcore fans who donate money.

Then there's other ancillary factors like the fact that much of the local community is transient, so 'Maryland pride' isn't instilled in people from a young age.

I don't disagree, but plenty of schools with little success or academic reputation do it better than us.

FYI, Clemson raised $18 million last year through IPTAY (their Terrapin Club).

Pittsburgh claims nine football national championships; Illinois claims five. It may not be a significant factor because most of them were 50+ years ago, but I'm sure they use them to beat their chests about their great "tradition."

64K question.

Here's my main list:

1) We instill no local pride. People on Ohio who have no connection to Ohio St bleed that school. The same can be said for a lot less prominent schools. (we're also a much smaller state).

2) We got started late

3) We haven't been great in football -- basketball has essentially kept this department afloat for 10 years. That sport is much less the money generator than football so really speaks to the success and demand there.

4) We're a working class school. Also minorities and first generation college grads tend to be less charitable (across all philanthropy) than others, go figure.

You know that's because they have that crazy, southern football passion that we're never going to have.

And, as I pointed out earlier, they also have the smallest endowment in the conference.

The thing is you can't change a "culture" (whatever that means) overnight.

You can't get on your pedestal and say "Hey, our culture of giving here sucks. That's why our teams suck. Why don't you start giving us lots of your hard earned money? Then we'll be as awesome as UNC, Florida, etc."

It doesn't work like that. The way it works here is that, hey, I'll give you 100 bucks this time and see what happens. If we get good results and I feel great talking shit to my UVA coworkers then the next time, I'll give you 500 bucks. And if we continue to be good then maybe I'll give you 1000 bucks. But the moment I see you hire that POS Randy Edsall who goes on to dismantle our team, I'll go back to giving 100 bucks or maybe even nothing until you get rid of that asshole.

Pitt has the med school. My ex boyfriend went there and worked the phones, and most of their big alumni donors are from the medical school.

In other words you want us to take a course of action to lower our endowment.

This a great point. They also have a law school. People with professional degrees are more likely to donate for obvious reasons.

Giving the professional schools their own campus was an incredibly short-sighted decision.

Objectively looking at the benefit listings, I actually think the Gold Level isn't so bad, if not improved with an "All Access Event" if it will be similar to what the basketball team did. Seems to be the sweet spot in terms of giving levels.

I can see the Silver level folks issue that their fee has doubled, but frankly the previous staff was giving too much away for that level, and most of it of the garden picnic variety. There are other ways to look at it, but sometimes it just doesn't meet the goal to raise the funds needed. In the old MGN, the Gold Level raised as much if not more than the hundreds that joined at the Silver Level.

As for Platinum, sure there may not be many, but if you get say 10 folks then you have generated a good amount of revenue for really not much more than a Gold Level member receives. That is truly the philantrophic giving level. There were some attempts of this in the old MGN, but it really wasn't pushed hard.

Good points MoCoTerp. I don't really see how the previous staff was giving too much away, the only benefit was some cold appetizers. All the MGN events are Cash Bar so other than giving of their time the Coaching Staff is not giving much at all tangible to the Silver Members.

My final point on the difference between $100 and $250 is that at a hundred bucks I just sign up no questions asked, at $250 I feel like I need to get it cleared with the boss. This year I don't think she will be too thrilled with that kind of donation..

Sounds like that's gonna put a damper on much giving.

IPTAY: I believe stands for I pay thirty a year...... granted it was given the name a long time ago, however the strategy of getting a lot of people to pay a little makes sense

I think the MGN peaked at about 1,000 members, I doubt it is close to that anyone. The decision to raise the dues now is foolish.