Comparison to Stanford Athletics Fundraising
by islandbruin on Feb 15, 2012 5:30 AM PST
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PrintClearly as a private university, Stanford has a different fundraising profile than UCLA.
I received my master's from Stanford. I give them money. I used to give UCLA more, back when we did not need to register our discontent with Morgan Center.
As a donor to Stanford, I receive a quarterly periodical, highlighting major donations. I can't say that I have seen something like this in the past from UCLA, although there may have been something. But Stanford clearly does a much better job of trying to connect alums with what is going on at their alma mater.
The Stanford document highlights major gifts across the board- undergraduate education, graduate education, the arts, and athletics. They are all treated equally.
Here are some of the purposes for major gifts highlighted in a recent issue:
over $1 million to the Department of Athletics to support the football coaching staff and to the Graduate School of Business
over $2 million to the Department of Athletics to endow an athletic scholarship fund
$1 million to the Department of Athletics to support soccer, including improved facilities
$1 million to the Department of Athletics to construct a football practice facility (what is wrong with Spaulding?)
And here is some creativity, which I am sure is lacking in Morgan Center. If you commit to donate a certain amount for 5 years, a scholarship is funded and is assigned to an individual student-athlete, who is encouraged to stay in touch with the donor. They establish a direct connection between athletes and donors.
Nobody can deny that Stanford combines athletics and academics. This is not an SEC public school letting athletics drive the school's mission. And yet the President (self-described Number 1 fan) and administration get that athletics generates a strong connection which binds alums to the university long after they have left campus. And Stanford finds a way to feed the connection, and to make athletic donors welcome and valued.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Block shows no public interest in the state of disrepair that our Athletic Program has fallen into under Dan Guerrero's stewardship. There may not be $1 million donations falling by the wayside at UCLA, but it would definitely be low hanging fruit to get rid of our overpaid AD, bring somebody in who re-establishes connections with the fan base, and see the donations roll in.
If Stanford can do it, why can't we? Again, magnitude is presumably different, but that doesn't excuse the complete lack of effort and interest from UCLA's administration.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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Imagine what $700K could do
With that amount of money, UCLA could boot Guerrerror and, in his place, hire a competent AD plus perhaps three talented alumni relations experts. It really just takes a few people to right the ship. I suspect the number of athletic fund and alumni communications staff at Stanford is roughly the same as the number at UCLA, but Stanford’s staff members may be more proactive, creative, and sincere about building personal relationships with alumni than UCLA’s are.
Getting an excellent staff is sort of like recruiting a basketball team — you don’t need many people, but the ones you recruit need to be enthusiastic about coming to play hard every day. Every few years, update and upgrade the roster with new talent to keep the ideas fresh. If the Morgan Center, Alumni Association, and Murphy Hall invested a few hundred thousand dollars in getting top talent, the university would enjoy healthy cash returns and a rise in student and alumni spirit many times over.
Instead they give us
“Word from Westwood,” “feasibility studies,” “What’s wrong with Spaulding?”, “straps,” “Adidas clown uniforms,” etc. Block/Guerrero are embarassments to our university.
Dump Dan!
by bruinclassof10 on Feb 15, 2012 1:45 PM PST up reply actions
There is so much untapped potential for UCLA
Fundraising could be so much better than it is now. UCLA’s Morgan center is just so insular and close minded. I think that they fear if they opened up to more money from private donors than they would actually have to deal with alumni.
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