greenlock said:
So much of this has already been covered. We had a plan with Bowman/Zenger and the response was weak and non-actionable even though our fundraising methods are very similar to other universities. We advertise in general to markets like Chicago and personal contacts are made to primary participants.
I've spend some time thinking about why so much factual information has been disregarded and I've come the conclusion that it's a basic human desire to believe that others think as we do and want what we want. "I'm from Chicago and I'd like to see Illinois State make a much greater investment in athletics so lots of others will want this as well."
This perception gets reinforced because we choose to interact with like-minded people. We can find a lot of them here at RedbirdFan. We forget that the people that post here are NOT typical alumni, students or fans.
We don't have a lot fans in Chicago that come to games and obviously alumni that do not come to games are NOT likely to be athletic donors. We can celebrate the exceptions. Madbird comes to football games from beyond Chicago (Madison, WI). Highly commendable and noteworthy because it is VERY RARE. And Greenlock this may shock and amaze you but sometimes a Chicago area alum will buy season tickets and then just give them away to friends closer to B/N who will actually use them. Again, very impressive and generous but EXTREMELY RARE. There's probably only one person doing this. These exceptional fans and all of us that follow Redbird Athletics on a daily basis are the exception and not the rule. I think a lot of us fail to realize that once you get past the participants of this board and the population of people that are actually attending Illinois State athletic events the enthusiasm and desire to contribute financially to Redbird Athletics drops off dramatically. So Greenlock, when you were a The Redbird Club member how many fellow Chicagoans did you recruit to become TRC members and donors? Easier said than done.
If you move outside of Redbirdfan. net and outside the tailgates and the Legends room events you'll climb out of the cozy bird's nest into the real world and you'll find tons of people associated with Illinois State that are mostly indifferent to our athletic situation and some that are even hostile to our desire to raise our athletic profile.
We can see this taking place at a similar university. I'm including this link to a "Daily Egyptian" article that appeared on this website recently. The article deals with the current deficit afflicting the SIU athletic dept. SIU is also a school that has completed most of their athletic dept. capital projects with student fees. I guess all of their AD's have sucked at private donor fundraising too. At one time SIU had more students than Illinois State but their enrollment has been dropping and it may come to the point where this athletic peer institution may no longer be considered a peer. I know we don't have the same enrollment problem so don't bother because that isn't my point.
My point is that this isn't a fan website. It's their student newspaper so it draws readership from the more general population. The real world you could say, not just the college athletics minded and as such I would draw your attention to the comments section more than the article itself. It's an open forum and the four comments are somewhat hostile to idea of the university funding the athletic dept. to the extent that it does. This is what the real world looks like.
https://dailyegyptian.com/79417/more-headlines/siu-athletics-running-on-cumulative-deficit-of-26-million/
So I like and admire Redbird Fans but I find that they can be an idealistic rather then realistic group. When administration after administration decade after decade does not produce large scale athletic donations it can only be due to the people in charge of the fundraising. The idea that others just aren't as interested as you isn't an acceptable belief. Humans will be human.
