The MONEY of sports: VAF contributions far outpace academic donations

In the University of Virginia’s marathon race to raise $3 billion in private contributions, an indefatigable frontrunner is UVa’s athletics department.
The Virginia Athletics Foundation, the department’s fundraising arm, had collected $234.2 million by the end of February, representing more than 78 percent of its $300 million goal. UVa’s five-year campaign to raise $3 billion will conclude Dec. 31, 2011, and is just over halfway finished.
The athletics foundation has received so many contributions from alumni, Cavalier sports fans, former athletes and corporations that it is outpacing the fundraising performance of nearly every academic area of the university, according to documents obtained under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act.
The athletics department has generated substantially more cash and is farther along with its fundraising targets than UVa’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Law, the Curry School of Education, the McIntire School of Commerce and the School of Engineering & Applied Science.
Only UVa’s Medical School Foundation has outpaced the athletics department in achieving progress toward its goal, raising $243.4 million, which is 83.9 percent of its $292 million goal.
The medical school’s fundraising arm is a significant chunk of the total UVa Health System’s fundraising effort, which has brought in a total $353.7 million, which is 70.7 percent of its $500 million target.
Out of the total $302 million worth of philanthropic gifts to the university in 2007, a full $30 million went to the athletics foundation.
“I am just really proud of the way our athletics fundraising has come together,” said Robert D. Sweeney, UVa’s senior vice president for development and public affairs. “It’s been operating on all eight cylinders for some time now.”

‘100 percent self-sufficient’
The Virginia Athletics Foundation has 21 employees, including nine fundraising officers, who operate out of an office suite at Bryant Hall, which is connected to UVa’s football stadium. Its mission is to finance the day-to-day operations and support the growth of UVa’s 25 sports.
“Not one penny of state, municipal or university resources goes into the athletics program,” Sweeney said. “It’s 100 percent self-sufficient.”
Foremost among the foundation’s expenditures are projects involving UVa’s sports facilities, such as the $86 million refurbishment of Scott Stadium and the record-shattering $130 million construction of John Paul Jones Arena.
The foundation also pays for the equivalent of 316 scholarships for many of UVa’s 650 student-athletes.
Covering the tuition of student-athletes is a considerable expense, as nearly two-thirds of UVa’s athletes come from states other than Virginia. For the current school year, an out-of-state student’s tuition is $27,940 per year — more than triple the cost of in-state tuition.
Even more worrisome for UVa athletics officials, the university’s tuition costs are rising. As a result, the foundation’s scholarship costs jumped from $10.2 million in 2006-07 to $11.3 million in the current academic year.
Down the road, tuition costs for both in-state and out-of-state students may increase dramatically. According to documents filed with the state, UVa projected that in-state tuition could climb as high as $17,578 in 2017-18 and out-of-state tuition could rise to $53,497 in that same year. In other words, having a well-funded endowment will become even more crucial to UVa athletics in the coming years, said Dirk Katstra, executive director of the athletics foundation.
“It’s scary for us,” Katstra said. “We have to pay the full freight for these scholarships.”

ACC fundraising leader
By the end of 2006, the Virginia Athletics Foundation had $126.5 million in assets, according to its most recent filings with the Internal Revenue Service. Collecting that kind of money, the documents show, was not cheap. The tax-exempt organization spent nearly $37.86 million that year.
Compared with its peer institutions, UVa’s athletics fundraising machine is a powerhouse. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, UVa led the Atlantic Coast Conference in philanthropic cash flow for sports. The next closest school in those years — the most recent for which comparative data is available — was North Carolina State University.
Yet unlike some other higher education institutions, UVa’s athletics fundraising prowess does not apparently take away from donations to academic programs, according to four fundraising officials from different areas at UVa.
“Because there had been some concern over that, I had some folks over here run the numbers and it showed that the majority of UVa’s donors give to both academics and athletics,” said Alison Traub, UVa’s assistant vice president for development and the interim director of development for the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. As of Feb. 29, it had raised $154 million, which is 31 percent of its $500 million goal.
Athletics can be a boon for higher education fundraising efforts, Traub said, because they foster pride in one’s alma mater and keep alumni emotionally engaged.
“Whether they’re watching a game on TV or if they’re watching it from the stadium, athletics let alumni stay connected to the university,” she said. “That really helps development.”
A top-notch athletics program can also help academic fundraising because it gives development officers a place to woo potential donors.
“We’ll take them to football and basketball games,” said Tim Redden, associate dean for development and vice president of UVa’s engineering foundation. “It lets us wine and dine ’em.”

Benefiting from backlash
Redden said the engineering school’s foundation does not necessarily compete with the athletics department for fundraising dollars. He added, however, that the engineering department is benefiting from backlash about the athletics foundation’s new football ticketing policy.
“We’re hearing a lot of kickback,” Redden said. “People are so upset. They’re saying, ‘We’re not giving to athletics at UVa anymore. I’m giving to engineering.’”
The athletics foundation doles out season tickets and assigns seating for Cavalier football games. Starting this fall, the best seats in Scott Stadium will go to the most generous donors to the athletics program, rather than some longtime season-ticket holders who had the most desirable seats for decades.
As many fans lost their long-held seats, the new policy angered some fans. Katstra responded by saying that the new policy will be more “equitable” in how it assigns seats and will generate at least $1 million more per year.
Katstra said it is too early to know if the athletics foundation is seeing its donations suffer from the backlash, but it does not appear so.
“We’re ahead on every fundraising benchmark,” he said.

Will woes impact giving?
It is also too soon to tell if the Cavalier football team’s woes over the past few months will impact giving.
In mid-January, the university announced that four players, including starting quarterback Jameel Sewell and cornerback Chris Cook, were not enrolled for the spring semester, making them ineligible to play in the fall.
Then, on Feb. 29, cornerback Mike Brown was arrested and charged with grand larceny, possession of stolen property with intent to sell, altering serial numbers and possession of marijuana.
And just last week, redshirt freshman J’Courtney Rydell Williams was charged with credit card theft and credit card fraud. He has since been dismissed from the team.UVa athletics donors are typically believers in the concept of scholar-athletes, Sweeney said. Many UVa supporters, he said, want to see the Cavaliers win, but not at the expense of having players who are not up to par academically or who are getting into trouble.
“We want to win,” he said. “But the way in which we win is just as important as the winning itself. We won’t sell our soul to win.”
Slightly more than 70.4 percent of UVa’s athletes graduated within six years, according to the most recent statistics available. That figure, Sweeney pointed out, is higher than the national average.