ion Athletic Department

Since the Barry University athletic department opened its doors in 1984, Michael Covone has been a driving force behind its success. As Head Women’s Soccer Coach from 1984-1995, he compiled a 140-32-9 record and led the team to three NCAA Division II national championships. In 1988, he added the job of Associate Director of Athletics, then became Executive Associate Director of Athletics from 1996-1998, before being named Director of Athletics in 1998.

On Covone’s watch, the Buccaneers have won 23 Sunshine State Conference (SSC) titles and two NCAA volleyball championships (2001 and 2004), and produced 53 All-Americans. In the Sports Academy Directors’ Cup, Barry regularly finishes among the top 10 percent of schools in Division II. Equally successful in academics, Barry has boasted 40 Scholar All-Americans, two Walter Byers scholarship recipients, and two NCAA post-graduate scholarship recipients in the last eight years. Covone was honored with a GeneralSports Turf Systems Athletic Director of the Year Award in 2005.

Covone is a part of many campus, community, conference, and NCAA committees, currently serving as Vice Chair of the NCAA Division II Management Council and sitting on the NCAA Division II Identity Committee, the NCAA Community Advisory Task Force, and the Orange Bowl Committee. In this interview, he talks about committee work, promoting academic achievement, and how to maintain broad-based success.

AM: Why do you take on so much committee work?
Covone: As the director of athletics, I need to know and understand our institution, our community, and the NCAA. So I look for opportunities that will take me into each of those realms and allow me to interact with as many of our constituents as possible. It’s valuable to our program that I know what’s happening in the NCAA, within our division, and within our institution. I also feel I need to have a finger on the pulse of our surrounding community. I think that’s extremely valuable to our student-athletes and to the future success of our program.

I actually really enjoy making a difference in our community and for our student-athletes, coaches, administrators, and peer institutions. Volunteering is gratifying, and I wish everyone in the higher education business would take advantage of the possibilities.

Tell us about your work on the NCAA Division II Identity Committee.
The biggest issue in Division II may be its identity. Two summers ago, presidents from about 150 Division II institutions assembled in Orlando to more effectively define and describe our division’s role in college athletics. The outcome was a strategic-positioning platform that essentially describes what it means to be a Division II member. The group identified six attributes that characterize Division II schools: passion, balance, resourcefulness, service, learning, and sportsmanship. To be clear, nobody claims that Division II uniquely owns these qualities. Rather, Division II’s leadership determined that those are attributes our members should exhibit—and most often, we do.

What’s the biggest thing you have learned as an athletic director that you wish you had known from the start?
That anything can happen in the world of intercollegiate athletics at any time. Higher education has changed and will continue to change with new technology, rising costs, competition, and growth, and that demands constant decision making. As an assistant or associate athletic director, you are not making those decisions. Until you are a director of athletics, you may not fully understand or see the big picture. I quickly realized I don’t have control of everything and I have to expect the unexpected. Anything, positive or challenging, can happen at any time.

What do you look for in the coaches you hire?
Leadership qualities, experience, fit, and the right philosophy for our institution. Kyllene Carter-Weiss, who was our Head Women’s Soccer Coach from 2001 until this fall, provides a good example. I recruited and coached her, and she went on to get her master’s degree from Barry and worked as a graduate assistant and then an assistant coach before we hired her as head coach. Because of her experiences and commitment to the institution and because she had lived our mission, we knew she was the right person for the job. Even though she lacked prior head coaching experience, we knew she had the other qualifications we were looking for, and it worked out wonderfully.

How do you get athletes to value academic achievement as much as athletic achievement?
It starts with the philosophy and mission of the institution. We support the student-first philosophy and we have a strong academic support system. In response, the university provides tremendous support for the intercollegiate athletic program, both academically and athletically.

Second, it is vital to be up-front and honest when recruiting students and their families. We have stringent academic policies for all student-athletes. They must attend class and study hall under the athletic department policy or they will not participate. The ultimate goal at Barry University is that every student-athlete graduates by the time they complete their athletic eligibility.

Have you had any mentors during your career as an athletic administrator?
Jean Cerra [Dean of Barry’s School of Human Performance and Leisure Sciences, who served as director of athletics from 1991-1997] has been instrumental in my development. I was her associate and executive associate athletic director. She is a visionary, a leader, and a fair but competitive individual who has a tremendous amount of experience. She is also a person of character and values, and her mentoring has guided me for many years.

In addition, I have gleaned a lot of knowledge from other athletic directors in my conference, and now I try to pass that on. The athletic directors in the SSC have great relationships with each other and we are very proud of that. We have a mixture of youth and experience, and the young administrators ask for guidance and information from the more experienced. I think an athletic director seeking a mentor would do well to look within his or her conference.

How do you maintain success across an entire program?
We treat coaches and student-athletes from all programs equally. There is no tiering of sports, no stressing one over another, and we don’t put a disproportionate amount of funds into one sport. Everyone receives the same per diem when we travel and all teams travel the same way. Everyone receives the same type of equipment and apparel. Our rule is that we treat people the way we would want to be treated, and I believe that accounts for the success we’ve had program-wide.

Also, all of our coaches are on one-year contracts. I have been here for 23 years and I have signed 23 one-year contracts. No one is given a more extensive contract than anyone else, and that stresses the equality of all our programs.

How has modern technology changed your job as athletic director?
Mostly, it has increased potential revenue streams. Accessibility to a wide range of audiences through technology has enhanced potential sponsorship and partnership opportunities, which have become extremely important to the financial stability of intercollegiate athletic programs. But at the same time, costs associated with technology have skyrocketed.

You launched the BUC-E-NEWS, an electronic newsletter for Bucs fans, and oversaw the start of broadcasting games on the Internet. How do you evaluate new technologies to distinguish the solid opportunities from the money pits?
The key for us is to integrate as much as we can with our institution. We have tremendous resources and people in our technology programs, and we work to develop those partnerships and use their expertise to evaluate new opportunities and minimize costs. Our Internet game broadcasts are a good example—we collaborated with the resources available at our university, and created something that reaches out to parents and friends of the program, both domestically and internationally. And the response has been great.

What about traditional media like newspapers and television?
We still work hard at developing relationships with print and TV media. Being in a metropolitan area of some five million people, and in a pro sports town like Miami, it isn’t easy. The success we have had with traditional media has been primarily due to feature stories on our student-athletes, not only as athletes but also as students and as individuals. For example, we have had six NCAA Woman of the Year top 10 finalists. Across all three divisions, there is only one other school that has had more. We are one of two institutions in the NCAA that has had two Walter Byers scholarship winners. These are some of the stories that have garnered positive local media attention for us.

You have forged corporate sponsorship deals with Coke, Nike, Papa John’s, and Boston Market. What is the secret to your success in this endeavor?
It’s all about relationships. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone. You must develop those relationships, which can turn into partnerships. And that means being visible in the community and on campus. Developing friendships first is essential, as is maintaining and enhancing relationships with your fans.

Sometimes we can forget that our student-athletes and their families are very important to our programs, and we don’t develop those relationships. We aren’t just recruiting a student for a four-year commitment. It’s a 40-year commitment. Every institution has students who succeed in the corporate world, and we’re no different. We hope that because we have treated them right and developed relationships, they will feel good about partnering with us in the future when opportunities become available.

What do you hope your student-athletes take away from their experience at Barry University?
Our mission and philosophy is that our student-athletes are students first. We want to see them eventually be leaders in their communities, not just succeed athletically. They are not going to be professional athletes after their careers here. They are going to be professionals in other fields, and we want them to be productive citizens and do whatever they can to enhance other people’s lives.

What do high school cheerleaders have in common with stadium lights, locker room amenities, and travel opportunities? They must be provided equally to boys’ and girls’ sports teams for a school to comply with Title IX, according to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In one upstate New York athletic conference, that decision had a big effect on basketball games this winter.

Last April, the parent of a female athlete at Johnson City (N.Y.) High School filed a complaint with the OCR over cheerleading inequity at several schools in New York’s Southern Tier Athletic Conference (STAC). Because high schools in the conference provided cheerleaders for boys’ basketball games but not girls’ games, the complaint alleged an inequity in terms of benefits and support services.

After holding teleconferences with all 19 public high schools in the STAC, the OCR ruled that schools were violating Title IX by not providing cheerleaders for an equal number of boys’ and girls’ games during the winter sports season. The only exception involved playoffs: If one basketball team made the postseason and the other did not, a cheerleading squad would be allowed to perform at those playoff games, even if it made the total number of games with cheerleaders unequal between the genders.

Most schools in the conference complied, usually by dropping boys’ away games from the cheerleaders’ schedule and replacing them with girls’ home games. Three schools, however, appealed the decision and continued to schedule their cheerleaders only for boys’ games.

While the OCR’s ruling directly affects only schools in the STAC, New York State Public High School Athletic Association Executive Director Nina Van Erk sent a letter to school districts across the state urging them to re-evaluate the equity of their promotional activities. Van Erk told the Associated Press that the letter encourages “equality in all promotion and publicity, not just cheerleading. Boys and girls need to be treated equally in all regards—in any publicity, any funding, any support.”

But administrators, coaches, and students at some of the affected schools have questioned whether the true spirit of Title IX was upheld with the ruling. “At a lot of schools, the truth is girls’ basketball players don’t want cheerleaders on the sidelines—and by the same token, the cheerleaders don’t want to cheer for girls’ games,” explains Richard Stank, President of the STAC. “To be in compliance with the OCR’s ruling, the schools would be doing something that didn’t make either group happy.”

Donna Lopiano, CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF), says that’s the wrong way to approach the issue. “Someone who’s being discriminated against cannot simply decide that it’s all right,” she says. “Cheerleading squads are recognized student organizations that exist to advance school spirit and support the team they’re cheering for—if the school provides that for a boys’ team, it’s unacceptable to deny it to a girls’ team.

“If a girls’ team isn’t comfortable with the cheerleaders’ routines or the way they’re dressed, that’s a separate issue the school needs to address,” Lopiano continues. “It’s the school’s job to make sure the cheerleaders meet an acceptable cultural standard. The school can’t just decide not to provide them.”

For some schools that did choose to mandate cheer support at girls’ games, the results were positive for both athletes and cheerleaders. Lynda McGarry, the mother of a high school basketball player in Spencerport, N.Y., wrote an editorial in the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat & Chronicle praising the change. “My daughter was not too keen about this idea at first, suspecting that the cheerleaders would not want to be there to cheer for other girls,” she wrote. “However … at the first home game of our girls’ basketball team, our family was pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm of the cheerleaders and the crowd, which was much larger than usual. It seemed that both the cheerleaders and the players had a new respect for each other’s sports.”

In other Title IX news, at the collegiate level, Boise State University is in the midst of bucking a nationwide trend. Rather than cutting men’s sports to bring itself into compliance, BSU is adding four new women’s sports.

“This is the right way to do it,” Gene Bleymaier, Athletic Director at Boise State, told the Idaho Statesman. “When [Title IX] was passed, it was not intended to reduce the opportunities for men. The intent was to increase the opportunities for women. Not only are we committed to Title IX, but we’re committed to gender equity and we’re committed to proportionality, which is the strongest statement that you can make.”

Under Bleymaier’s plan, Boise State has already added a women’s swimming and diving team, which competed for the first time this past winter. The Broncos will welcome women’s soccer in 2008, lacrosse in 2012, and another yet-to-be-determined sport in 2017. By that time, the school hopes to achieve Title IX compliance under the law’s proportionality prong, but in the meantime BSU is most likely in compliance under the “history and continuing practice of program expansion” provision of the statute.

At James Madison University, the opposite path was taken last fall, and the school continues to find itself in a firestorm of controversy. When JMU’s Board of Visitors announced that the school was dropping 10 sports to reduce costs and achieve proportionality, students held protests on campus and local editorial page writers spent months debating the decision. And in an unprecedented move, United States Olympic Committee CEO James Scherr sent a letter to JMU’s president condemning the cuts.

Noting that virtually all the dropped sports had Olympic connections, Scherr wrote: “It is well documented that the spirit of the Title IX law is to ensure opportunities for participation in sport are proportional and fair for men and women. We have seen universities across the nation inappropriately use Title IX as an excuse to justify the elimination of sport programs … [The USOC] welcomes the opportunity to work with you in identifying viable alternatives to keep these intercollegiate sports alive at James Madison University.”

Despite the efforts of Scherr and JMU’s campus activists, Athletic Director Jeff Bourne has announced that the cuts will proceed as scheduled. As of July 1, 2007, the school will eliminate men’s archery, cross country, gymnastics, indoor track, outdoor track, swimming, and wrestling. It will also cut women’s archery, fencing, and gymnastics. Scholarships for current athletes and verbal commitments made by coaches will still be honored, so Bourne estimates it will be four to five years before the school eliminates all funding for the dropped sports.

It’s not surprising that Bellevue (Wash.) High School’s booster club pays Head Football Coach Butch Goncharoff an annual supplement to his coaching stipend—after all, Goncharoff’s teams have won five Washington 3A state championships in the past six years. What is surprising, though, is the amount: $55,000 per year. And even more surprising is that, until recently, the Bellevue school district had no idea about Goncharoff’s additional compensation.

The matter caught the attention of the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA), which is now looking to make sure local school boards remain in the loop on booster club payouts. In December, the WIAA Executive Board passed a proposal that would require boosters to get approval from their school’s board of directors for any stipends or gifts offered to coaches. Member schools statewide will vote on the rule in April, and if it passes, it will take effect starting with the 2007-08 school year.

The rule’s supporters are concerned that booster clubs may believe they are buying influence when they write checks to coaches. “This proposal is about defining who the coach really works for,” says Mike Colbrese, Executive Director of the WIAA. “The answer is the school district. But if a booster club is paying a coach 10 times what the school is, who is he going to feel he answers to?”

Indeed, Goncharoff’s $55,000 booster club stipend dwarfs the $5,753 he received last year from the school district. The proposed rule would not prevent boosters from making such a payment, but it would make sure the school has a chance to approve or deny it. “Schools boards should know how much coaches are making. It’s that simple,” Colbrese says.

Beyond giving boosters too much power, there are several other reasons why a school district needs to know coaches’ full compensation. For one, schools could be violating Title IX if the coaches of boys’ teams receive more money than the coaches of girls’ teams. There could also be ramifications for coaches who are unionized.

“Many of our state’s coaches are members of a union, and some individual schools have their own coaching unions,” Colbrese explains. “Obviously, members of those groups have an interest in knowing what other coaches are making. The ones who aren’t getting the extra money are going to demand some kind of equal opportunity.”

A survey of the state’s athletic administrators conducted late last year by the WIAA found that about 80 percent of respondents favor a rule giving schools oversight of booster clubs, and Colbrese says the opposition comes mainly from those who fear a slippery slope. “A few people have asked whether this rule could be the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “They worry that at some point the association may start making rules about booster club support of other things, like marching bands and debate programs, and they ask if that’s a direction we should be heading in.

“But I don’t see it as being about the WIAA regulating more areas,” Colbrese continues. “It’s about making sure local school boards have control of what’s happening in their athletic programs.”

The WIAA’s proposal closely mirrors a rule already in place across the border in Oregon. According to Brad Garrett, Assistant Executive Director of the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA), his state’s rule ensures each school has a transparent money trail for athletics. “Our policy stipulates that any donation in support of an athletic program must be given directly to the school administration, so school officials can control where it goes and how it’s used,” says Garrett. “We greatly appreciate and encourage booster activities and anything else people want to do to benefit high school athletics. We just want to make sure they’re doing it the right way and out in the open.”

While the rule has been in place for years, Garrett says he can’t recall the OSAA ever having to sanction a school for violating it. “I think it’s clear to everyone in our state what the proper procedures are, and it’s certainly in the schools’ best interest to make sure they’re being followed,” he says. “Every school should know where its athletic funding is coming from and where it’s going. “

Division I athletic departments are spending too much money, growing their budgets at a rate two to three times that of the rest of higher education, and borrowing against future earnings to pay for facility expansions and upgrades, all of which puts their institutions at risk. That is the finding in an NCAA report, “The Second Century Imperatives,” released in October 2006 by a 50-member task force.

In a letter introducing the report, NCAA President Myles Brand and Peter Likens, the now-retired President of the University of Arizona who chaired the task force, raise the concern that the burgeoning growth of Division I spending may eventually overwhelm institutions’ academic missions and further erode integration between student-athletes and their non-athlete peers. “The current business model for athletics is strained and the financial stability of athletics for the future is at risk,” it says.

Because the NCAA cannot make across-the-board rules to check spending, the report emphasizes that answers will not come through national-level legislation or reforms, but rather through “presidential leadership that begins at the campus level.” The report also calls for better collaboration and data sharing between athletic directors and university presidents to help rein in spending.

At the University of Massachusetts, Athletic Director John McCutcheon views the report with caution and a little skepticism. “I think that generalizing about Division I spending is a little dangerous,” he says. “There are annual budgets in Division I of $100 million, and there are annual budgets below $10 million. Athletics spending is an institutional decision. If an institution makes a decision to position athletics at a certain level, that is its prerogative.”

“There are institutions that put a lot of money into their athletic programs because they have a strong commitment to sports and want great programs available on their campuses,” agrees DeLoss Dodds, Athletic Director at the University of Texas. “Who can argue with that? That is their choice.”

The report voices particular concern over heavy spending on facilities, pointing out that nearly 20 percent of current spending is tied to construction projects. It calls the borrowing associated with infrastructure improvement “little more than a get-rich-quick branding initiative” that has the potential to backfire.

Dodds sees a different reality, however. “Many institutions built their athletics facilities in the 1920s and 1930s, and they’re run down and in need of fixing,” he says. “We’ve recently spent money to update our 30-year-old football, basketball, and baseball facilities, and that might lead to the perception that we’ve increased our spending in a permanent way. But the reality is, now we’re in good shape for the next 25 years and won’t need to spend that kind of money again. I believe this is what’s happening at many institutions, and it’s a temporary bubble.”

Jamie Pollard, Athletic Director at Iowa State University, agrees that athletics spending is up to individual institutions, but also acknowledges that schools face a great deal of pressure when making financial decisions about athletics. For one thing, the visibility of athletics may drive constituents to demand more than the university can realistically afford. And since these donors and fans are often footing at least part of the bill, they feel entitled to have a voice.

“Most institutions fund large parts of their athletic programs through donations and ticket sales,” Pollard says. “When you ask your constituents to fund the enterprise, you bring them into the decision-making process. And what they typically want is bigger facilities and more successful teams. To accomplish that, you have to pay top dollar to coaches and do capital projects.

“For institutions whose constituents are willing to fund that kind of success, I see absolutely no problem with it,” Pollard continues. “But it becomes a problem when institutions without the constituent base to play in that arena feel pressured to try to compete at that level anyway. Not every school has a hospital or a veterinary school, and people accept that. But constituents expect every school to have a top-level athletics program, even if it means the institution has to subsidize it at a very high level.

“There is enormous pressure for presidents to stay in this arena, even when the logical choice for an institution may be to pull back. A president who stands up and says, ‘This is ludicrous. We can’t compete at this level’ may very well find him- or herself out of a job.”

At Iowa State, Pollard’s solution is to communicate directly with alumni and donors. “Our constituents want much greater results than we’ve had so far,” he says. “But we’re a smaller player and we haven’t had the ticket sales and donations to support the type of success they want to see. So we are in the process of laying out a strategic plan to show our constituents exactly what it will cost to have the kind of program they say they want. And we’re telling them, ‘If you really want these results, you are going to have to pay what constituents at other schools are paying to get them.’

“Some people have called it a risky approach, but I feel it’s better to tell people in black and white what it will take,” Pollard continues. “If they want it, they can do it. If they don’t, they don’t. But I believe it would be worse to be the leader of a program where you promise your constituents a certain result and don’t know how you’re going to fund it.”

Dodds, Pollard, and McCutcheon agree with the report’s conclusion that university presidents need to be intimately involved with the day-to-day operations of their athletic departments, but all three believe this is already the norm. “The perception that athletic departments are operating in a vacuum is false,” McCutcheon says. “Conversations between athletic directors and presidents are already going on.”

More than communication, Pollard believes what’s really lacking is data. “We need financial data that can be accurately compared school to school, and we need a reporting structure for collecting it,” he says. “The task force seems to be asking schools to change, but based on what? If there was a report that came out on a regular basis showing what schools are doing financially, that would provide impetus for change.”

To learn more about the task force’s work and download a copy of the report, visit: www.ncaa.org and enter “The Second Century Imperatives” into the search window.

For years, skateboarders at De Pere (Wisc.) High School were used to school officials shooing them away when they tried to skate on school grounds. But this year, administrators are not only accepting the extreme sports interests of their students, they’re actually encouraging them.

When De Pere circulated surveys in May 2005 to gauge interest in new sports or activities, it discovered a great demand for extreme sports like skateboarding and snowboarding. The students’ interest spurred De Pere to create a new after-school club to reach students who wouldn’t otherwise sign up for school athletics.

“The idea is to give each of those students a connection with a role model beyond their teachers in the classroom and to foster a sense of belonging to a group,” says Athletic Director Jeff Byczek.

But De Pere also knew the club needed to be led differently than the school’s traditional sports. “Many of the kids who are interested in extreme sports gravitate toward less structured environments,” Byczek says. “A kid who’s involved in skateboarding is probably doing it because he doesn’t want the rigid organization that the basketball team has, and if you put that kind of structure in place, he might back away.”

“We are keeping the interest of the kids in the forefront of how we proceed,” says club Advisor Robert Mohar. “The more we can provide an outlet for participation and shape the club to their interests, the better.”

The extreme sports are treated like an after-school club rather than an interscholastic sport. The school pays for transportation to skate parks and ski resorts, and club members pay reduced admissions negotiated by the school. Sports currently offered include skateboarding and inline skating, skiing and snowboarding, and mountain biking. The school is still trying to implement paintball and motocross, and will re-evaluate the program after its first year to determine if sports should be added or dropped.

“Our kids are very excited about it,” Byczek says. “The students who are interested in skateboarding had felt kind of shunned before. They always wanted to skate here at the school or in the parking lot and we had to tell them they couldn’t. Now, we’re the ones taking them to the skate parks.”

Uncovering new donors requires thinking about the fundraising game in a systematic way. It also means leaving no stone unturned.

By Anna Barber

If your athletic department is like most, you probably need to raise more money this year than you did last. Whether it’s a capital campaign or more ambitious yearly goals, there is always a push to bring in more than before.

But where do you find that additional money? How do you uncover new donors, especially those people who are not already involved in your athletic program? This is one of the biggest challenges in athletics fundraising—and it takes both careful planning and creativity.

On The Same Page
When trying to attract new donors, most people think about identification and cultivation. However, before any of those hands-on tasks can be undertaken, thoughtful and thorough planning are necessary. Much of this work centers around making sure everyone is in sync.

First, all development staff should be able to clearly articulate the athletic department’s vision. One cannot successfully sell a product without a clear understanding of what that product consists of and what its objectives are.

Just as your department is competing with other schools for wins, it is competing with other non-profits for dollars. Your program needs a clearly defined purpose so potential donors can distinguish it from other organizations seeking philanthropic support. The key to turning prospects into donors is showing them that your needs match their values.

It is also important that athletic administrators and fundraisers are in sync on fundraising goals, which should be set in conjunction with the institution’s and athletic program’s mission. Leaders must develop and agree on both short- and long-term goals.

Staff members also need to be on the same page in a more literal way. An athletic development office must plan internally in order to be successful externally. And that can only happen by answering some specific questions.

How will the dollars raised be spent? This sounds like a simple question, but in many cases, development officers do not know the exact answer. Make sure everyone on your team knows how funds will be distributed: Does the money go to support student-athlete scholarships or the general athletic department budget? Will individual teams directly benefit from sport-specific annual gifts or will that money only indirectly help their programs? How will endowments be used—as supplemental or replacement dollars for individual team budgets? Being prepared to answer these questions gives credibility to a development officer and builds confidence within the donor about your program.

What is the plan for reaching our goal? Based on your fundraising goals, you will need to devise a strategy for identifying and approaching your prospects. You will also want to set goals and benchmarks to evaluate your progress in turning targeted prospects into donors.

How will we brand our image? Sending a consistent brand and message gives your prospects a sense of familiarity that increases their inclination to give. Therefore, when sending out any external communications, use consistent colors, logos, and phrasing to make your department easily identifiable. For example, when you see a light sky blue color, what school immediately pops in your head? Did you think about North Carolina? That’s the power of the brand.

Part of branding includes developing campaign statements that draw on the department’s mission, values, and goals to explain why you need financial support. Even though case and campaign statements will seek private dollars for a variety of projects at numerous levels, all your statements should reinforce a unified message to create a clear identity for your athletic program.

Finding Donors
Of course, planning is only the first step in expanding your donor base. The meat of the job is identifying viable prospects. This can seem like an overwhelming task: Where does one turn when looking for new donors? Amazingly, many new donors can be found quite easily, if you look in the right places.

As athletic departments, we are fortunate because we have built-in constituencies. Former student-athletes, players’ parents, season ticket holders, school alumni, and members of the local community have a natural affinity for our programs. To fully tap into these resources, familiarize yourself with the intricacies of your school’s donor database system. At many schools, a research staff may be able to do this work for you, which is fine—but if you don’t fully understand the capabilities of your database, you won’t be able to get the most out of your requests.

For instance, here at Michigan State University, we have an “evaluations” section in our database that includes individual prospect ratings based on demographic research, surveys, and feasibility studies conducted by a development consulting group. Knowing where to find this information, understanding how to interpret it, and using it when identifying new prospects is critical for an effective search. Without a solid understanding of your donor database, a lot of good information can be overlooked.

Another avenue is to talk to your current donors about helping identify new prospects. Who knows people with money better than the people who have money? In most instances, your current donors will be more than willing to help bring in new donors. Current donors are already invested in your program, and will probably want to encourage others to invest as well.

Finally, take the time to read the local newspaper every day, paying close attention to the business section. You will be amazed at the amount of information you find about potential donors. As you read about someone, look for information on schools attended, extracurricular activities, philanthropic interests, business relationships, and investments. (If you don’t have time to do this, have a student highlight the stories that may pertain to prospects.) Reading newspapers from major metropolitan areas near your institution may also be advantageous.

For example, we identified a new prospect in a newspaper article that mentioned his alumni status and business affiliation with one of our large donors. The article implied he had the capacity, and our donor confirmed it. Combined with intense cultivation efforts by our office and encouragement from our current donor, the lead resulted in a $100,000 gift. Not bad for a few hours spent reading the news.

Educate & Engage
Cultivation is the next step in bringing in new donors. If you want those you’ve identified to actually open their wallets, you must educate and engage them in your program.

Educating your prospects about your program means teaching them about the department’s mission, values, and goals. It includes explaining the many different areas they can give to and the different methods of giving (cash, securities, planned gifts, real estate). If you neglect to tell your prospects everything you want them to know, you will most likely not maximize a gift or have people give to the right area.

Sometimes the keys to educating a prospect are preparation and persistence. When I was at Miami University, there was a prospect who was very difficult to contact. However, we systematically and continually sent information and called him. After 10 unreturned phone calls, he finally called back. I was prepared to talk to him on the spot about our program and how he could fit in. From that conversation, I was able to schedule a meeting, which resulted in a discussion about a gift of $1 million.

Engaging your prospects gives them the connection they need to the athletic department. The stronger the connection you are able to build, the more motivation prospects have to give.

For example, ask prospects to serve on functional campaign or advisory committees that directly or indirectly influence the direction of the department. Talk to them about implementing a job program in which they hire current student-athletes. Host events where prospects can mingle with student-athletes, coaches, and administrators. And entice them with donor benefits that include connections to your student-athletes and coaches, such as a dinner with the coaches. Be creative and think outside the box!

Expanding a donor base in a world of ever increasing demand can be difficult, for sure. However, with the right planning and a little creativity, there are no limits to success.

Anna Barber is Associate Director of Athletic Development/Director of Major Gifts at Michigan State University, and the former Assistant Director of Athletic Development at Miami University (Ohio). She can be reached at: barbera@ath.msu.edu.

For most communities, the divide between recreational youth sports and high school athletics is a given. The programs focus on different age groups, have different philosophies, and employ separate staffs. But what would happen if a town put one person in charge of sports from T-ball through varsity basketball? Portsmouth, N.H., is finding out.

Working together, Portsmouth School District Superintendent Bob Lister and City Manager John Bohenko have created a new position: the community athletic director. The city’s longtime Recreation Director, Rus Wilson, now has responsibility for administering high school sports along with his previous job of managing 150 community teams of all ages.

In the new system, Wilson has two offices, one in city hall and the other in the high school. Three senior recreation staff members assist him, and the high school has provided administrative support. A part-time athletic director in the middle school works closely with Wilson, as do coaches who oversee sports in the elementary school. Together with recreational sports, the entire program is known as the “community athletic department.”

“We’re the first to try this, as far as we know,” Lister says. “We’re in uncharted territory, but we believe this is going to be a good solution for us.”

Several years ago, Lister explains, Portsmouth eliminated its full-time high school athletic director position because of budget cuts. An assistant principal at the school assumed the role of part-time athletic director, but when his assistant principal tasks went to full-time, the high school was again left without an athletic director.

“We don’t have $75,000 or $80,000 to hire a full-time administrator,” Lister says. “So we started talking about other options. And we realized there could be several advantages to having a community athletic director.”

One big advantage is financial, Lister acknowledges. Wilson’s stipend to add high school sports to his job description is about $25,000 a year.

However, Lister believes an even bigger plus is that the system creates continuity across all age groups and levels of play. “This encourages our high school coaches to get involved with our youth sports,” he says. “Our philosophy and skills teaching will be the same all the way through, and that will give us a big competitive advantage.”

Wilson agrees, and cites as evidence Portsmouth’s girls’ volleyball program, historically the most successful athletic program at the school with a state title in 2004 and a state semifinal appearance this fall. “Our volleyball coach works with kids starting in third grade,” he says. “By the time they get to high school, they have the skills he wants them to have. We believe the new system will create feeder programs like this in all our sports.”

One concrete step in that direction is a mentoring system Wilson has implemented where high school athletes work with middle school, elementary school, and recreation teams, typically once or twice a season. In place of a practice, a varsity team conducts clinics for younger players and then holds a short scrimmage. “The coaches support it because they know that these younger athletes are their future players,” Wilson says.

Wilson also believes the new setup will result in better experiences for student-athletes. “I get to know kids when they are four or five years old, and I know their families,” he says. “When they reach high school, I’ll already know any issues they’re dealing with, and they’ll already know me.”

Before the combined position was established, there were some concerns raised by a few parents and school board members. One of the most common was that youth sports may begin to emphasize competition and individual achievement over inclusion, due to the greater emphasis on rec programs as feeder teams. But Wilson believes he can prevent that from happening.

“As our varsity coaches get more involved with youth teams, we will make sure they aren’t simply identifying ‘talent’ and working with select kids,” he says. “Our rec programs will remain inclusive, and we’ll continue to have rules that ensure every kid receives playing time.

“As athletes get to high school, the philosophy will be more competitive,” he continues. “But I truly don’t think we’ll have a problem differentiating between the two. It’s good to win, of course, but if kids aren’t having fun, even in high school, there’s something wrong.”

For the events staff at the University of Oregon, the 2005 football season was marred by an incident during the USC game, when drunken Ducks fans had to be dragged out of the stadium in handcuffs. So before the start of the 2006 season, the athletic department put several new policies into place to avoid a repeat performance.

First, Oregon rewrote its alcohol policy for Autzen Stadium, limiting consumption to controlled areas within the building and prohibiting all alcohol in the stands. “When people are found with alcohol, they are immediately escorted out,” says Events Manager Vicki Strand.

Second, department marketers worked with an outside agency to develop a light-hearted “Code of ConDUCKt” ad campaign, which emphasized good fan behavior by placing duck footprints around the stadium with punning messages like “No fowl language” and “Ducks aren’t boobirds.” At the same time, the student agency on campus, Allen Hall Advertising, developed a campaign targeting students, with print ads of a duck and a human behind a shower curtain and the tag line “Keep it clean.”

Third, working with the Eugene Police Department, events managers created an NFL-style telephone “ConDUCKt Hotline” for fans to report gameday incidents. When someone calls the hotline number, which is posted on the scoreboard, a phone rings in the stadium operations booth. An operator asks the caller for the location of the incident and quickly dispatches security or medical personnel to the section.

The results? “The number of serious incidents decreased significantly,” says Strand. “Knowing that anyone can make a quick call to security helps deter some of the behavior we’ve seen in the past.

“Also, the Code of ConDUCKt has helped clarify the expectations we have of our fans,” she continues. “Do I have concrete proof it’s helping? Not yet. But our fans know clearly how we’ll respond if the code isn’t being followed. There have been none of the big incidents we had last year, and that is a very good thing.”

The 2006-07 athletic season at Jesuit High School in Portland, Ore., was the type most athletic directors can only dream about. Five of the school’s teams won state championships, five more finished as runners up, 16 teams won Metro League titles, and a slew of other team and individual earned accolades. The entire year was topped off in June when Jesuit was named the nation’s top athletic program by Sports Illustrated.

Athletic Director Mike Hughes credits the program’s success to a tight-knit coaching staff and a focus on team rather than individual accomplishments. It’s a philosophy he personally follows by calling on the school’s two previous athletic directors—now serving as assistant principals at the school—for help in guiding the program. Jim Naggi (Athletic Director from 1993-2000) and Chris Smart (Athletic Director from 2000-2005) form a link of experience dating back to the school’s first year as a co-ed institution and help Hughes maintain a continuity that’s spurred much of the program’s success. In this interview, Hughes, Smart, and Naggi talk about how they work together, their philosophy on three-sport athletes, and getting coaches to cooperate with one another.

Athletic Management: What does it mean to have a “team� approach to athletics?

Hughes: As Athletic Director, I appreciate that there are former ADs in the administration here who I can turn to when I have questions. For example, if a basketball coach asks for open gym time at the beginning of the school year, those guys will pull me aside and say, “Do you really want to do that the first week of September? We have traditionally not allowed open gyms so early in the season because cross country athletes who also play basketball will look at it and wonder if they should be going to open gyms instead of running.�

Naggi: It’s more of an informal relationship. The first year I arrived was the last year as an all-boys school, and at that time I was responsible for getting the 10 new girls’ programs up and running. It’s handy for Mike to have Chris and I to trace the history of how the program handles situations that have come up before. We don’t sit down and analyze the day-to-day issues, that’s what Mike does, but as far as being resources he can tap into, we’re there for him.

What is your department’s philosophy?

Hughes: In our mission statement, we say we want to educate athletes intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, aesthetically, and physically. Our coaches always remain true to that mission. We stress that our school is about formation, not just information. Those aren’t just flowery words. We want to form them as human beings. We feel that if we educate the whole person it will pay off in all five of those areas.

We have a very strong Catholic ministry program that works on the kids’ self-esteem and makes them feel loved and spiritually and emotionally whole, and that carries over to the sports programs. When they’re emotionally healthy, there aren’t as many team issues or problems with selfishness on the field.

Smart: Our athletic department is a co-curricular program, not extra-curricular. We try to put athletics in its proper place. First and foremost, we’re a Jesuit Catholic school, and we wouldn’t exist if not for the spiritual importance of what we’re trying to do. All our trophies are in the athletic facility, not spread out across campus or the administrative wing. The first thing you see on campus isn’t the stadium or the field lights, it’s the cross above the performing arts center.

What’s made us successful is having a clear mission, and we honor athletics as one part of the educational process. We tell parents, “When you walk into the gym and see banners hanging from the rafters, that’s one sign of accomplishment. But we haven’t been successful unless 10 years from now your children can look back and say, ‘Because of my athletic experience, I’m a better father, better mother, a better citizen, and I’m contributing to society.’ If they can’t say that, then whether or not they won five championships as an individual or a team, we have not been successful.�

Naggi: We’ve all been at schools where the only purpose of athletics is recreation, to win, to entertain, or to occupy the students’ time. Sometimes schools don’t give it a lot of thought and the athletic department is a separate entity not connected to the other things the school does. From the start, we’ve always said we want the program to complement the classroom and other activities the school has to offer. If there is success as a result, great, but the point is not to win, the point is to be consistent with what the school is about. And more likely than not, the by-product of that mission will be success.

You encourage athletes to play more than one sport at Jesuit. In a time when more athletes tend to specialize, how do you accomplish this?

Smart: We work very closely with our coaching staff to encourage them to share athletes. For the most part, our coaches work really well together. We’ve got a head football coach who doesn’t run a spring practice program because he knows many of his kids are participating in track and field.

Naggi: We all believe competitors are developed in a lot of ways. It can be counterproductive to have a student in one sport for 12 months. It narrows their thinking so they believe they have to master a skill set in one sport in order to be a good athlete. Our philosophy is that you’ll be a better athlete the more you can put yourself in a variety of scenarios where your different athletic skills can show through.

Also, we encourage student-athletes to play multiple sports because it’s practical. With only 1,100 kids enrolled here, if each coach had their little cadre of people they insisted stay with their program, there’s no way our teams would be as successful as they’ve been. To be successful in as many different ways for as long as we have been, we need student-athletes who feel comfortable doing more than one thing. Kids don’t get penalized if they only want to do one sport, and there’s not a feeling that if you’re a football player that’s all that you are.

Hughes: We lament what seems to be a nationwide trend to focus on just one sport year-round. We think there’s less chance of injury if a kid plays multiple sports because there isn’t the repetitive wear and tear of one sport. It also develops different muscle groups and allows them to be quicker athletes, better athletes, and have that core strength they may not get in just one sport. They’re also hungrier. They come to a sport they haven’t played in six months, and it’s fresher and more exciting. If they’re playing the same sport in high school and clubs year-round, they tend to burn out.

With attention from the media and college recruiters, how do you keep athletes focused on school and teams?

Smart: We have solid kids who are successful because of our team approach, and because of that they don’t have a lot of ego when it comes to their individual accomplishments. We intentionally try to downplay our individual accolades, so that everything we do is the accomplishment of the team and the school. We talk about that so often that kids are pretty humble and team-focused rather than individual-focused.

Naggi: The kids are so connected with their teammates they don’t want to be that hot-headed egotist everyone dreads. Even coaches for the so-called individual sports—track and tennis—talk about it as being a team sport and they’ve done a really good job making even their best athletes stay connected to themselves.

What do you do to emphasize well-rounded athletes who also excel in academics and other activities?

Hughes: We’re a college prep school and the athletes know that coming in. Not only do we have good athletic programs, but students will be ready for college when they graduate. We send 99 percent of our graduates to four-year colleges and universities. Kids know that academics comes first, and the coaches help with that. If a kid goes to their coach and says they need to redo a science lab and will be late for practice, that’s never a problem.

Smart: It also helps to have coaches on the faculty who know how their athletes are doing in the classroom. They’re constantly monitoring their athletes on a regular basis, and we’re communicating well as an administrative team with our coaches. We also have some pretty clear rules about when practices have to start and finish in order to keep the focus on classes. We end school at 2:30, but freshman football doesn’t start until 3:30 so the players have time to see a teacher for extra help if they need to without having to miss practice time.

Naggi: When there is an academic problem with a student-athlete, coaches work one-on-one with the academic vice principal. Coaches often use athletics to motivate the kid to do better academically. I know one coach who told an athlete who was struggling in a class, “You can practice every day, but you can’t play in games again until your grade is up where it needs to be.� The coach was firm in not letting the kid play games, not fudging things to get him back on the field. If sports can be a spur to help students reach their academic potential, then we’re not good educators if we don’t use it.

What does it mean to be named the nation’s top sports program by Sports Illustrated?

Hughes: First off, our coaches are very humbled by this. Many of them have received national attention and league and state awards, but you would never know that by talking to them. Our program takes this award in stride, and I’m sure our business office will put it on our admissions brochure, but our coaches are always focused on the next game, the next practice. They know the moment it goes to our head we’ll become complacent and lose our edge.

The reason we’ve been successful year after year is that our coaches know even though they may have won championships, it’s the first year on the team for some of their players and those kids haven’t won anything yet. Every year we have a whole new set of kids, and we can never sit and be comfortable with out past accomplishments.

Naggi: If you go back and look over the years since our school went co-ed, it’s been a building process leading up to this point. Inside the department, all our coaches and administrators know we have been running this program the way it should be run. It’s nice when a set of outside eyes validates that we are running the program the right way.

Muncie (Ind.) Central High School does not want its MTV. In November, the school turned down an offer that would have cast Bearcat players as stars of a new reality TV program modeled after the Music Television Network’s hit show Two-A-Days, which chronicled Hoover (Ala.) High School’s pursuit of a football state championship. Muncie Central was one of two East Central Indiana schools to decline the invitation, with New Castle High School also saying no thanks.

With a rich basketball history that includes the most state titles in Indiana boys’ high school basketball history, Muncie Central was an obvious choice for the part. But after discussing a preliminary proposal from producers, the school decided the show was not in its student-athletes’ best interests.

“We all agreed that the project would be a little too intrusive on our kids,” Head Boys’ Basketball Coach Matt Fine says. “We felt that having cameras focused on them for several hours a day would interfere with their academics, family lives, and basketball.”

By turning down the proposal, Muncie Central is most likely missing out on a financial windfall. In addition to the $20,000 MTV paid Hoover High School for filming rights, the school has made a large profit from team merchandise sales. To meet the national demand, the school even had to set up an online store.

“Yes, the money would have helped our bottom line,” says Fine. “But ultimately, we decided that you can’t put a price tag on the disruption the cameras could have caused, not only to the basketball program, but to everybody else in our school.”