Thank you for explaining that and thank you for what you did regarding donations. Can you give a guess of the percentage of your classmates that are interested in the athletic programs?
So without the info at my fingertips, here's what I recall and a little about the process in general.
We received an email in the Spring of the year prior to our reunion year asking us to be on the committee. I presume this is based on prior donations, volunteering, years giving to Roll Call, AT Fund, etc., but not totally sure about that. In the Fall of the year prior to our reunion year, the 25th, 40th and 50th committees meet for two days on campus. We meet all together at first and hear from folks from the Alumni Association, we're given rosters of our class and a GT notebook (with yellow instead of gold trim, don't get me started....). Then Bud comes and gives a talk and presentation and we have a tour of campus.
The next day we break up into the various reunion committees and they give us stats on prior committees have done as far as monetary goals and participation percentages. For the 25th over the prior 10 years or so, the totals had been around $600,000 to $1.5 million as I recall (could be off a little, would have to go back and look). The highest year there was someone on the committee who was either very well connected or had made an early fortune and that was clearly the reason why they did so well as he made a big pledge and/or contacted like everyone in the class. The percentages of the class giving was VERY low on average for the reunion, somewhere around 14% to 16% as I recall. We all thought, "well that should be easy to beat" as all you had to do was to get someone to give $1 and they counted toward the percentage figure. We had a goal of $1 or $1.2 million and 20% participation. The Alumni Association people told us that would be tough.
Well, it was much harder than I imagined. We broke down the class by who you knew (from fraternity/sorority, clubs, majors, hometowns, high schools, etc.) and reached out to those people to donate. The lack of response really surprised me. I've been going to Tech athletic events since I was about 5 years old and have been giving to Roll Call since my Freshman year (bought those years back after I graduated), AT Fund since graduation, football and basketball tickets since graduation, etc. It's in my blood. The response I got from the people I contacted was minimal from a dollar perspective and worse, in my mind, in just a general response perspective. Now at 25 years you are mid to late 40s, likely have kids, maybe in or on their way to college, trying to save for retirement, etc., so I get it, but it was tough. We were in school for the 1990 National Championship and the 1990 Final Four. Lots of excitement on campus, but in the end, we raised around $900,000-$950,000 and had around 16-17% participation (again, off the top of my head), with some late donations.
In addition to my normal donations, I did a Roll Call donation and a 5 year pledge to AT. Nothing major, but more than I typically do, which counted along with my other AT Fund, Roll Call and other random donations given in that 18 month prior/6-12 month post Homecoming time frame.
In the end, I was really shocked at how low overall participation was. Maybe it was just that the 25th year is an odd time with people still working hard, kids, trying to save money for retirement, etc. 40th and 50th were clearly much higher and always are. I want to say 40th is usually around $3-$5 million and 50th is more like $5-$20 million (?), which make sense as all of these people are at retirement or have retired and are more likely to do larger, estate donations. I figured 20% participation would be easy, but it was not at all. I guess that is just Georgia Tech. Raising large donations is probably easier than small, but raising athletic funds is even tougher. I know there is a stat that GT's percentage of alumni donating to Roll Call is higher than any other school (or was at one time), but perhaps that is more older alums and not younger ones?
Whatever the case, we should work harder as an institute from both the Roll Call and AT Fund perspective to increase the participation percentage and amounts. My assumption is that this is just going to get worse as the current students seem less inclined to attend games and likely less inclined to give money. But, we'll see.
Hope that helps in understanding the process and where the totals are derived.
