Correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I heard from other alumni, is that a lot of alumni can give two fcks about Miami Football. They are “casual fans;”support the team when they good.
Furthermore, the alumni base that support sports is pretty small. Therefore, majority of the support come from non-alumni. The Soffers come to mind. If majority of the support r non alum, it would stand to reason the bigger investors in the program, whether that’s financially or emotionally are the non-alum, which would make sense if they complain or voice displeasure, no?
Explanations must be provided.
There is a difference between the booster club and capital campaigns.
Yes, the Soffers donated a lot of money for a building. Capital campaigns do not have to rely on alums giving a few thousand each year. Capital campaigns are based on large one-year or multi-year installment contributions that may come from alums, but more often come from wealthy people who live in the community, no matter where they went to school.
Capital campaigns are where I would argue that Beta Blake has really fallen down. Beta Blake is a ticket guy, an operations guy. He is not a big-picture multi-year-relationship type of a guy. Beta Blake needs to hire a top-flight "Development" person to head up the mid-term and long-term capital campaigns. In addition, the BOT needs to empower the Athletic Department to make these efforts RELATIVELY independent of the "regular" UM Development Campaigns. Yes, they can share info, but the Athletic Department should never have to wait multiple years just because UM is doing some Med School fund-raising.
As for the alums contributing money, UM does fairly well on a per-capita basis, but we are a smaller private school with expensive tuition, so we don't have as many alums. It is NOT that our alums "don't care". First, UM football was great from about 1980 until the mid-2000s, but older alums from the 1970s and earlier may not be as passionate about UM football (or basketball, which was only revived in 1985). Second, I know many alums who don't donate a lot of money after they graduate because they have massive student loan debt. ****, I would have donated more money in the 1990s and 2000s if I didn't have student loans to pay. I have talked to many young alums at UM Alumni Association events, and I can definitely tell you that student loan debt and incessant fund-raising calls from UM have made them cynical and unlikely to donate.
I would like to see Beta Blake (or even our new AD) figure out more ways to encourage Hurricane Club donations. I have a lot of ideas, but I'm not going to list them all here. I'll say this, the newer NCAA/IRS rules have taken some of the incentive out of donating more money to booster clubs, so it's going to take some creative thinking to get back to where we used to be.