Recruiting Challenge Update: $315k

[jwsavhGT]

This is from an email I just received. It also covered our 3 signees from yesterday.

In just one month, Georgia Tech’s Football Recruiting Challenge has netted more than $315,000, easily surpassing its initial goal of $200,000 in donations, the Georgia Tech Athletic Association announced on Wednesday. Georgia Tech’s Football Recruiting Challenge was unveiled publicly on Jan. 6, spearheaded by an anonymous donor that stepped forward with a generous gift of $200,000 on a matchfunded basis, pledging to match 50 percent of the first $400,000 committed for the two-year program. Tech set an initial goal of raising $200,000 by Wednesday, Feb. 7 (the first day of the NCAA’s late signing period). That $200,000 would be matched by $100,000 from the anonymous donor, which would fund the first year of the recruiting enhancement initiative. The initial goal was reached easily, with 320-plus donors contributing more than $315,000 through Tuesday. That will allow Georgia Tech football to begin the process of hiring four new positions within its recruiting staff – three analysts tasked with talent identification (one for offensive players, one for defensive players and one early-stage specialist, who will focus specifically on identifying prospects in the freshman and sophomore years of high school), as well as a brand development specialist, who will help promote the Yellow Jackets to prospects via digital and social media. Click Here to learn more about Georgia Tech’s Football Recruiting Challenge, including specific goals outlined by Stansbury and Johnson, and to contribute online

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

FWIW, I think the 5 and 10 dollar donations might even be more important, and here's why (bear with me).

If you are one of the 300 hardened GT donors that gives 1000 bucks, you're going to be with the program NO MATTER WHAT. If you're the kind of guy that gives a G for recruiting, you're all in, and have been for some time. This program doesn't make a lick of difference for how much you care about GT's program, you were at 100% to begin with. They have season tickets, and they're going to be there, rain or shine.

That said, there are about a million and fifty people who have no skin in the game at all, and see GT and go "oh I kinda like them". If you get THAT guy to put in 10 bucks, he's got a little connection to the program, and I'm of the opinion he's WAY more likely to one or two random saturdays in the fall go "you know, lets head downtown and watch a game, I actually contributed to that team, I'd like to see if it paid off".

Building that secondary network of folks who actually sorta care about the program, because they feel like, in some small way, they're personally connected. They're PART of that program, and it's THAT level of folks, who bring their kids to games, whose kids wear GT gear around school, who have GT bumper stickers but aren't invited to the luxury suites that make a program and a following.

I know it takes 100 of those folks to equal the up front impact of one hard core type, but I think long term, that's how you want to be.
That's how Clemson has done it for years.
Thats the kind of person GT needs to be reaching out to.