Why can't we raise the money for a practice facility?

This has baffled me for quite some time, considering the amount of money that resides the Twin Cities, and the relatively small price tag of $15 million.

Consider the following:

Minnesota has a population of 5.3 Million (2011) and an GDP of $254.9 Billion (2007). The University of Minnesota has approximately 375,000 Alumni, 60,000 of which are Alumni Association members.

Brushing aside the obvious high target donor/corporate partners/naming rights agreements, etc., the $15 million could be raised in a single year by getting 50,000 (0.94% of MN population) individual donors to contribute $25 a month.

What exactly are they doing and why has it been 5 years with no visible progress? It doesn't seem like it should be that hard.

I would love to donate to a dedicated practice facility fund, where is it? Obama can raise tens of millions in an hour in small individual online donations.

Can someone enlighten me?

Hard to do something without trying.

For starters, we have no sugar daddy. No T. Boone, no Phil Knight, no whoever the Under Armour guy is. Those are the kinds of guys a program void of success needs to throw money around. One of those and our athletic department can do a complete 180.

I think Joel Maturi was a big part of the problem. He never got any Joel-mentum going on the project. Hopefully Woody can.

We also just built TCF and that tapped out a lot of donors. 40 years of not doing much caught up to the U in a big way.

I blame the MetroDump...once we left campus for FB, we stopped fundraising for 20 years. Then it was a mad rush, put a new roof on the church type event for TCF. Lots of one time contributors instead of every month and year donors. If we would have been building a war chest and fund raising apparatus during those 20 years, we would have a practice facility already, along with a bunch of other nice facilities. It will take years and years to get back to where we should be already...and then we will still be behind other schools...it is a decade long fix to just get back to par...then another decade to catch up a bit. Maturi was just fu_cking clueless when it came to building a big time athletic department.

Joel could only do one thing at a time. Want to send him an email asking for the latest Director's Cup standings? You'll get an immediate response. Want to donate $ specifically to a practice facility? Hmm, not sure we can do that. Would you like to donate to the baseball stadium?

Never do anything until you have to. First after 10 years or so of careful caution, TCF. Then, eventually, a baseball stadium, 10-15 years after it was promised. Then, maybe, eventually, a practice facility 10-15 years after it was promised (2017-2022).

I think it's a good idea to wait for a lead donor before starting the general donation process. If you get a bunch of people donating small amounts, it's not going to amount to much except a bunch of people complaining about their money going nowhere.

NateDawgUM said:

I think it's a good idea to wait for a lead donor before starting the general donation process. If you get a bunch of people donating small amounts, it's not going to amount to much except a bunch of people complaining about their money going nowhere.

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I can see your point in the short-term. But, in 6 years, instead of raising some money from smaller donors, they've raised basically none. That's better?

howeda7 said:

I can see your point in the short-term. But, in 6 years, instead of raising some money from smaller donors, they've raised basically none. That's better?

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That's Joel Maturi's fault. I think once the master facilities plan comes out, we'll see a lead donor and some movement. Amazing what an Athletic Director who isn't totally incompetent can accomplish.

50,000? Wow! You honestly think it would be that easy to find that may die-hard Gopher fans, with enough disposable income that they could afford to donate $25 a month?!

I think you'd have better luck trying to find 6,000 who could afford $100 a month, which would raise about half of what is needed. If the U saw that the fans were raising half the money, the other half might just materialize pretty fast. Or think more realistically and shoot for $50 a month for 2 years? Or $25 a month from 12,000 people for 2 years?

The U just got done with throwing a ton of money first fb's way, and then Baseball's way, they probably figure that they need to throw some money towards some woman's sport first before they can get away with throwing any towards bb.


And honestly, the general public is not going to recognize this as a need. The general public doesn't pay attention to the details. That is why I suggested shooting for a smaller number of diehards. You might even consider shooting for 600 who could afford $1000 a month. Now you are talking a realistic number. Sure you'd have to target just the rich, but we all know their are far more uber rich out there than there are upper class. I'm not including Middle Class, not because they couldn't afford it, but because the Middle Class usually prioritize what they spend their money on, and its not common to find many who think donating to something like a practice facility is a high priority.


If you really feel the need to include the middle class, well, shoot for 500 of those rich guys, and 1000 GHers. The 500 can do the $1000 a month and the 1000 GHs can each go out and recruit 9 others to donate $10 a month with them.


But I haven't done enough fund raising in my lifetime to be an expert, or even a good amateur. Just tossing out ideas. The last idea would involve some of the lowly masses, and could get started here at the GH, some of the rich alums, and the univ as well.


You willing to start it up? Gotta start somewhere. I'm not even lower middle class, so sorry, I'm not willing to start it up, but if enough GHers jump on board, I'd try to do my part. And I may not have a lot of disposable money, but I have time. Although I have to believe in whatever it is I'm giving my time to.

balds said:

This has baffled me for quite some time, considering the amount of money that resides the Twin Cities, and the relatively small price tag of $15 million.

Consider the following:

Minnesota has a population of 5.3 Million (2011) and an GDP of $254.9 Billion (2007). The University of Minnesota has approximately 375,000 Alumni, 60,000 of which are Alumni Association members.

Brushing aside the obvious high target donor/corporate partners/naming rights agreements, etc., the $15 million could be raised in a single year by getting 50,000 (0.94% of MN population) individual donors to contribute $25 a month.

What exactly are they doing and why has it been 5 years with no visible progress? It doesn't seem like it should be that hard.

I would love to donate to a dedicated practice facility fund, where is it? Obama can raise tens of millions in an hour in small individual online donations.

Can someone enlighten me?

Click to expand...

I share your frustration. I would love to donate to a practice facility. I know that ideally, having some major money lined up from large donors would help insure a successful capital fundraising campaign, but being able to demonstrate substantial fan support by accepting small donations now would, I think, help persuade large donors to weigh in. I am very concerned that we are at risk of a program downward spiral that will take years to overcome. The graduation of Williams and Mbakwe will be difficult to absorb. Our last two recruiting classes appear to me to me mediocre. Our best hope of being competitive in the near future is to have reasonable recruiting success with the Minnesota class of 2014. That's not likely, in my opinion, if there is no reason to believe that things are going to turn around. Beating Wisconsin tomorrow will help, but we need to do much more. We need to finish the season strong and do well in the post season. If that doesn't happen, we need to hire a new coach that can make us competitive, and one that recruits will recognize is likely to make that happen. But additionally, regardless of how we finish out this season, we need to demonstrate our commitment to the future by moving forward aggressively with a practice facility. I think starting the capital campaign now, with or without major donors, would be a step in the right direction.

15 months to come up with 1.5 mil. That's $100,000 a month. This is 10% of whats needed. The GH should NEVER be expected to come up with more than 10%? right?

With 100 GHers donating, that would mean $1000 a month.
With 1000 GHers donating, that would mean $100 a month.
With 5000 GHers donating, that would mean $20 a month.

Or, if we wanted to make a more immediate impact, say in the next 3 months, before a certain group of young men make decisions of where they are going to play in the future.

100 GHers donating $15000 each.
1000 GHers donating $1500 each.
6000 GHers donating $250 each.

I guess I have no clue how many GHers there are? Gotta be at least 1000, so if each of those 1000 found 5 diehard Gopher fans that don't come to the GH that would be willing to help out? Well, I might be willing to pony up $250 if I knew 999 other GHers were going to do it as well.

Or just go with $100 upfront and $10 a month for the 15 months. That would be a quick $600,000 with another $900,000 pledged to come in within 15 months. Not saying this is a realistic goal, but I think it would make an impact. If word got out to the press that GHers were doing this, who knows what impact it could have?

Just throwing it out there.