ACC Donors
- Thread starter TIGER-PAUL
- Start date
source? not sure
I'm sure they get that info through the ACC.
Great graphic. As many have said over and over, this shows how terrible Pitt's athletic booster base has been. Combine this with one of the nation's cheapest ticket prices for sports and you get the picture of how resource poor Pitt's athletic department has been even with one of the higher university subsidy rates among power conference schools. This is the floor that Barnes has to improve on.
There are 8,031 people on that graphic that bucked up, and that includes myself every year since I graduated from Pitt as both a donor and season ticket holder, including during my 5+ years of graduate school and nearly a decade of living over 1000 miles from Pittsburgh.
The problem is there are only 8,031 people, which is terrible compared to peer schools, and even worse when you factor in alumni base size.
It is not enough for just the same people to buck up, and it is largely the same people every year.
This graphic also shows the numbers that Barnes alluded to during his meeting with fans and boosters earlier in the year, and it shows why major moves to restructure the fundraising side of the AD are so critical (and hopefully successful).
Last edited:
If I read that graphic correctly, I think the story is even worse than it appears. Let's not forget that all athletic boosters are not alumni.
I am continuously amazed at how high my standing is within the Panther Club as a non-alum.
I am continuously amazed at how high my standing is within the Panther Club as a non-alum.
When I first joined the Golden Panthers upon graduation in 1996, I donated just $100 and was ranked in the top 1,000 of donors and was able to get 50 yard-line, press box side season tickets about 10 rows in front of Marshall Goldberg's seats in Pitt Stadium. And that was in an era when conference payouts were minuscule compared to now, so Pitt had to rely on gate receipts. The football program (not just the overall AD) was bleeding money like it had an aortic rupture and the university in general was a financial mess that was struggling to fill its beds. That's how incredibly bad the situation was. Most have no idea about how disastrous the 90s were or have their heads buried to that reality...and those people reveal themselves every time the topic of Pitt Stadium comes up.
It isn't that bad now... improvement has been made... but the core financial foundation of the athletic department, gate receipts and booster donations, is flat out atrocious compared to nearly everyone we are competing against which. Fortunately, there is certainly significantly more money coming in from our conference than ever before, which considering the relatively minimal number of varsity sports we support, helps to patch some of the gaping holes. But the financial foundation of the athletic department is still built like a lean-to compared to nearly any power conference school.
Last edited:
Well, 30 years of screwups running athletics will do it for most schools. And our endowment picture looks pretty good. People donate to a well-run organization.
Our overall endowment wasn't mostly built from individual donations, but rather foundations and investment returns. Pitt doesn't do well in the # of alumni that donate to the school (for any cause) either. For most of Pitt's history, I wouldn't say the university wasn't particularly well run, including up through 1996. The last decade has essentially been a clinic on how to successfully run a university.
More to the point, our athletic endowment isn't where it needs to be. A larger athletic endowment is another mechanism that could help compensate for a lack of gate receipts and booster donations, as well help insure the athletic department financial picture through competitive down cycles. It is folly to rely on conference distributions over the long term.
Last edited:
What bothers me is that some folks don't know all this (or simply don't want to know).
But they call Chancellor Nordenberg "Nerdy" without realizing what he did for the Unviversity.
But more to the point on this particular message board, some don't give the past Chancellor nearly the credit he deserves for what he did for athletics.
At a time when the University was struggling and athletics was losing money (as it still is), Nordenberg's leadership kept athletics relevant, and eventually thrived. A different Chancellor may have simply agreed with those in the University Community who didn't believe athletics should be subsidized.
I consider myself maybe one of the three to five biggest Pitt Hoops fans in the area.
If you want to know who is higher on that list, it's Chancellor Nordenberg. I know this because this is exactly what he told me.
He's a big football fan and supporter too, and spent more hours than a university leader ever should guiding football through some of its most dire predicaments in its history, to countrary of the narrative of the massively ignorant. The guy flat out loves Pitt and has dedicated his adult life to it.
Last edited:
source? not sure
What's worth adding to the chart is that when we entered the ACC, we were last in total dollars donated to athletics. I don't know if this has changed or not, in light of the fact that we have more total donors than Syracuse.
The major difference with Syracuse is that they have an amazing cash cow with hoops (sort of like Louisville).
Darryl Gross, aside from his flubbed football hire, has proven himself to have been quite an AD as well. SU has come out of nowhere to be a top 10 school in Director Cup standings. The success across their sports programs has been amazing the last couple years.
source? not sure
Barnes showed this graphic at the Town Hall. It doesnt surprise me that the schools that are culturally similar to SEC schools (Clem, FSU, NCSU, Lou) lead the way. I am very surprised VT and UNC are that low. With all that success under Beamer, those grads are now in their mid 30s to 40s and you would think that would translate to more donations. Also, VT is a creepy PSU-like campus town where you are so insulated that you have bo choice but to love VT football.
UNC being so low really really surprises me. Their fans are called "wine and cheese" fans. Its funny but it kinda seems like the richer, the snobbier that a fanbase is, the less likely they are to give. They dont value college sports like poorer fans if that makes any sense. Take me for example, I am a diehard Pitt fan who is fortunate enough to be doing well and I know I can give a lot more but I value better vacations, contributing more to my investments, and house stuff more than Pitt sports. Now, a WVU fan in my same position may live in a cheaper house and go to Ocean City on vacation because he donates so much to WVU.
We were dead last in the Big East as well, correct? Even behind the basketball only schools.
The last time I saw Big East numbers was 2006. At that time, we were number 15 out of 16 in total dollars donated.
That is shameful. Wow.
For you folks that went to Pitt...what is the disconnect? Why don't diplomas translate into later financial support?
Why care if the school seemed to not care?? Nordenberg cared, but had an AD for most of his tenure who never got it done on a wide scale. Honed in on a few whales, and that's not enough. Whales die or hit their limits.
The lack of caring has been the norm regardless of the AD.
Athletics Development improved under Pederson, even if modestly.
Goes back to Bozik.....Posvar & O'Connor were awful. I'm not sure about Gallagher's commitment, though I think he'll do good job as Chancellor. Barnes???
Think that to better understand things at Pitt there needs to be a distinction between general giving and athletics-related donations. A lot of the disconnect stems from the fact that Pitt has seemingly really never pushed hard for donations that are specific to athletics. They've picked the low hanging fruit w/r/t athletics-specific donations, relying on the relatively small membership of the Panther Club (and its predecessors) for giving earmarked specifically to athletics.
Meanwhile donations to the general scholarship fund at Pitt, or for major capital campaigns, have produced excellent results. Hence Pitt's very strong endowment.
Why? Priorities, one would suppose. Pitt evidently wants to do with the money that is gifted through donations to do with as they see fit. Maybe they have felt that if they put a bigger emphasis on soliciting for giving specifically to athletics that it would adversely affect donations to the general scholarship fund: that people won't give to both and they'd rather the donations be made to the general fund?
Maybe there is now going to be an effort to make a harder push to generate more donations for athletics under the current administration? Pat Bostick has recently been named as Director of Development in the Pitt Athletics Dept. Does this represent that a change in the approach towards athletics-specific giving is in the works? Guess we'll have to wait and see if it is; and if so what the results are.
Easy. Pitt does not graduate Pitt fans. They graduate Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, Eagles, Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers fans. Pitt is just a team they watch occasionally and only if they are really good and playing in a game that really mattered.
I know many Pitt grads and almost none of them are Pitt fans, let alone donors. I honestly dont think I know more than 1 other PC member. Why? Because you have to be a fan first, then a pretty big fan. Pitt has a hard time even getting casual fans due to the rabid followings of the 3 pro teams.
The problem is the "limited resources". Better mgmt of athletics has to start at the top line. If you don't have enough revenue, you're always juggling to save $$. Pitt's attempts to increase athletic donations have been hampered by the impression that it isn't really important. Couple that with the demeanor of the AD for so many years, and the results are plain to see. The school's overall condition is pretty remarkable, given the Hbg. B.S.
There are a few reasons, in my opinion.
One is the pro-sports, consumer driven mentality of the region. Pitt isn't viewed as a community asset or rallying point as schools are in many other college towns and communities. Pro-sports franchises serve that roll in Western PA, particularly the Steelers. There is little public consciousness of giving to higher education or college athletics.
Another is the fact that until 1966, Pitt was a much smaller, private institution, and was largely a commuter school until then. When it then became state-related and doubled enrollment nearly overnight, it became viewed with the entrenched suspicion bestowed on all large institutions located in the very pro-union Pittsburgh region. The nearly overnight growth also necessitated a rapid expansion of its physical plant that contributed community strain and decades of fairly poor town-gown relationships.
Another is the historic repetition of intentionally sabotaging athletics whenever they do have success. This happened most notoriously in the late 30s, and it happened again in the late 1980s. That tends to disengage a lot of supporters. Pitt has never fully recovered from the late 80s, and has failed to recapture the imagination of a pro-sports dominated region that demands championship caliber performances.
Pitt is a very different university than it was even in the 1980s. It very much more of a desitination, residential university attracting, on average, different types of students which are having very different undergraduate experiences and graduating with very different levels of attachment to their alma mater than even 20-30 years ago. We'll see going forward if this helps to make a difference. The problem is there are other forces at work, including the continued decline in interest of live sporting events, etc.
Last edited:
Our endowment picture looks pretty good because of the disproportionately large number of foundations in the region. Not individual donors so much.
Again, the foundation community in Pittsburgh is the reason the endowment is so strong. The very high profile capital campaign was led by Nordenberg, and the source of so many of the dollars were not from individuals to the extent of many capital campaigns.
And, I might add, the capital campaign was pretty mediocre compared to peers considering its $2.1 billion total over the length of time (over a decade) that it ran. For example, Miami, which is half the size, raised over $3 billion in half the time. That said, Pitt's campaign shattered previous records for Pitt, but it was mostly (or at best) par for the course among peers.
Last edited:
A significant factor which works against building life-long associations with alumni is that Pitt actively recruits and in some cases preferentially favors out of state students. Many such students do not reside in the region after graduation and do not continue as donors. The professional and advanced degree graduates have little ongoing connection with Pitt and if they donate, it is more likely to be towards their field of study, not towards athletics.
The higher academic profile of undergraduates probably also factors into decreased donations. Many acadmically oriented students may be less interested in athletics and a higher portion are likely to go on to graduate school, many outside the region.
Additionally, with student debt at all-time highs, most young graduates simply cannot afford to donate any time soon after graduation. The guy who was a long-time zoo officer described their effort to convert Zoo members into booster clubdonors and admitted it was largely unsuccessful.
Historically, it is a "corporate culture " issue here too. Athletics have not been a significant portion of the university identity since before 1940. There is simply no tradition of donating here, nor a particularly large fan base. The problem may be insurmountable. Pitt sports run a distant 4th behind the 3 professional fanchises here and the demographics are unfavorable. An aging fanbase will very possibly mean less donors in the near future, not more.
The two questions are .....
1) Why do so few alumni donate to the athletic funds ?
2) How can you get more alumni to donate to the athletic fund ?
Two basic questions that Pitt does not seem to be able to answer/solve.
The answer appears simple. Most alumni don't care about Pitt sports.
This is not really a sports town. It's a town that loves to jump on a bandwagon, but , with the exception of the Stillerz, loves to jump off just as fast. We proved that with the disappearing basketball attendence. Attendence ate3ven our beloved high school football is way down.
Unless that changes, nothing else matters. There are too many other activities competing for entertainment dollars here. In an era when attendence at sporting events is declining nationwide, raising money for athletics will not be easy.
Recruiting out-of-state students is an absolute necessity, and becoming more so with every year of decreases in real (i.e. adjusted dollar amount) funding from Harrisburg and the continued worsening of youth demographics in the Commonwealth. Pitt needs to increase its out-of-state recruitment well beyond where it sits currently.
I also don't buy the argument at all that out-of-state students are less likely to contribute to Pitt or athletics afterwards. Out-of-state students often commit to Pitt because it is a top choice, not as safety backup as is more likely to happen with local students: the 13th grade effect. Pitt also recruits a lot more in the eastern part of the state than it did 20 years ago, and these areas have no more allegiance to Western PA teams than does someone from New York or Maryland, so even out-of-state student numbers don't really tell the whole story. Anecdotally, there was significantly more apathy for Pitt in the 90s among its much more local student population than it there is now. Not to mention, alumni and athletic donations levels at Pitt have certainly never better than they are now.
I also don't buy the fact that more academically oriented students are less interested in athletics, as student attendance at football and basketball is higher than ever at Pitt and so have been the incoming students' scholastic achievements.
Out-of-state students don't actually seem to correlate with donations levels at other schools. Here's how Pitt's % of OOS undergrad students compares to the rest of the ACC:
Notre Dame 92%
Duke 88%
Wake 78%
BC 75%
Syracuse 63%
Miami 57%
Clemson 35%
Georgia Tech 34%
UVA 28%
Pitt 27%
VTech 24%
UNC 17%
Louisville 16%
FSU 10%
NCSU 10%
I do absolutely buy the idea that student debt is at an all-time high and that being a factor in recent graduate support of the institution. Unfortunately this is true everywhere, and debt is much worse at private schools with much better alumni giving levels than Pitt. So I don't actually think this is very causative to Pitt's particular rank compared to peers.
I also do not agree that sports aren't a part of Pitt's institutional identity. They always very much have been, particularly football, and there have been substantial resources (considering what was available) and administrative effort put into athletics over the last 15 years. Now, if you are arguing it hasn't been part of the institutional identity because of administrative hostility towards athletics during some eras, then I can buy that. But athletics, and football in particular, have been a huge part of Pitt's identity since the 1910s, although that of course waxes and wanes with the success of athletics.
Last edited:
Alumni donations to athletics is an issue that Barnes has specifically stated that he will be targeting. Now there are more athletic administrative resources to put into the issue, thanks to the ACC, we'll see how he does. It is a tough job. For Pitt's sake, I hope he has a rousing success for his efforts.
Last edited:
But Harve, "most alumni don't care about Pitt sports" is not the answer, it is the question ..... why don't most alumni care about Pitt sports and what can we do to get them to care about and contribute to Pitt sports ?
Also, alumni don't have to live in western Pa. to donate to Pitt athletics at some level ..... Only 1/3 of Pitt alumni live in western, Pa. so over 200,000 alumni live outside western, Pa. and are not spending money on the Steelers/Pens/Pirates ...... why are they not contributing something to Pitt athletics ?
Do Pitt alumni overall (wherever they live) really have more activities competing for entertainment dollars then alumni of other universities ? ..... What % of PSU alumni who live in western, Pa. or Philly (with pro sports competing for entertainment dollars) donate to PSU ? ..... it would not surprise me if it was a higher % then Pitt alumni in those areas contributing to Pitt.
If we increase the % of donors to the Panther Club by 1.2% of our alumni (3719 more donors), we would be tied for 4th place in absolute number of athletic donors in the ACC ..... to me this does not sound like an insurmountable feat ....... hopefully Barnes can do that and more.
"Only 1/3 of Pitt alumni live in western, Pa. so over 200,000 alumni live outside western, Pa. and are not spending money on the Steelers/Pens/Pirates ...... why are they not contributing something to Pitt athletics ?"
I will give you one partial answer, at least. And, maybe it is the most important answer--at least I believe so.
For many years (decades really) Pitt was mostly a commuter school and it is from that era that most of the older alumni--who presumably should have deeper pockets having advanced in or completed their professional careers (i.e. the alums who should be the heaviest contributors today). Because so many were commuters they never developed a strong attachment or association with the school because they didn't experience campus life beyond attending class. For example, even many of those living on campus in my era (late 1960's--early 1970's), came from only an hour or two away and went home most weekends leaving the dorms a ghost town on the weekends. The go home on weekend crowd were more attached to their high school's football team (Friday night lights) than they were to Pitt. For them Pitt was just a place to be Monday through Friday for classes, nothing more, so they were essentially in the the same situation as the daily commuters and built no emotional attachment to the school or its athletic programs. And, horror of horrors--some were PSU FB fans and continued to be throught their entire time attending Pitt!
I will give you one partial answer, at least. And, maybe it is the most important answer--at least I believe so.
For many years (decades really) Pitt was mostly a commuter school and it is from that era that most of the older alumni--who presumably should have deeper pockets having advanced in or completed their professional careers (i.e. the alums who should be the heaviest contributors today). Because so many were commuters they never developed a strong attachment or association with the school because they didn't experience campus life beyond attending class. For example, even many of those living on campus in my era (late 1960's--early 1970's), came from only an hour or two away and went home most weekends leaving the dorms a ghost town on the weekends. The go home on weekend crowd were more attached to their high school's football team (Friday night lights) than they were to Pitt. For them Pitt was just a place to be Monday through Friday for classes, nothing more, so they were essentially in the the same situation as the daily commuters and built no emotional attachment to the school or its athletic programs. And, horror of horrors--some were PSU FB fans and continued to be throught their entire time attending Pitt!
In the late '70's there were onky about 3000 residence hall students. Maybe that many again (undergrads) in apartments in Oakland. In terms of undergrad kids actually on campus, we're closer to Clarion or Slippery Rock than PSU.
I think you are missing the point. The real qestion isn't why shouldn't they donate but rather why should they? If they don't care about athletics, and a LOT of serious students don't, intercollegiate athletics are irrelevant to them.
My daughter went to college for six years. She actually played a club sport. She attended ONE college football game and no college basketball games at her undergrad and graduate schools.
Based on talking with her friends and grad school classmates, I believe Paco is wrong about the degree of interest MANY academically oriented students have in revenue sports. For most of her friends, revenue sports were not even on their radar screen.
Additionally, the degree that big time college sports is morphing into a business, and a corrupt one at that, makes many thinking people regard solicitations for athletic donations as just piling on another layer of hypocrisy.
Both of these are spot on plus in the scheme of things donating hard earned money to a schools athletic department isn't very high on most people's list of philanthropic activities.
Harve, I believe the cross section of those interested in athletics in high academic kids is likely similar to the general population...maybe not exactly the same, but similar. I've worked and gone to school with a lot of Ivy and MIT types, and I don't really think the cross section is that different. Perhaps they are interested in a greater variety of things, but not really different when it comes to athletics. And Pitt's current student body is averaging ~150 SAT points more than Pitt students did in the 70s and 80s (normalizing scores to the national average). It's not like this student body is filled with a bunch of egg heads with pocket protectors and bow ties.
You look at the ACC numbers, and you have much higher academically qualified student bodies and alumni bases donating at higher levels at Duke, Notre Dame, UVA, and Wake. It doesn't explain a place like Michigan either, which on average attracts students of better academic pedigree.
Winning is the biggest factor out there. If Pitt can start winning...making the events and functions around athletics exciting, than all the other things (like 92% of students now starting on-campus) could synergistically come together to build a culture of athletic support. But if athletics isn't fun for students, its not really going to change that much.
Last edited:
I understand that "donating hard earned money to a schools athletic department isn't high on most people's list of philanthropic activities" .... I don't expect a large % of alumni to donate to athletics, but why is donating to athletics at Pitt significantly less then most of our peers to whom the same principles apply ? ..... why are donations at Duke, UNC, etc. higher then Pitt ?
I agree that student loan debt and the commuter school excuse are contributing factors although we are less of a commuter school now and that factor should be diminishing..... and student debt is pretty much universal to students at all colleges.
I agree with CrazyPaco and also don't buy that because you were an out of state student at Pitt you are less likely to donate and I also don't buy that academically oriented students aren't interested in athletics or don't donate for the reason CrazyPaco stated and from my personal experience.
Also, I think winning would probably be a big help in increasing donations.
Similar threads
