A-T Fund Discussion

vapspwi

vapspwi

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Even with the advent of the TECH fund seat license stuff, I've kept up with giving a little money each year to the A-T fund, and occasionally give a little extra when there's some kind of special initiative going on. Not a big donor by any means, but I figure that having a middling priority level is occasionally useful.

My A-T rank has sat in the mid-3000s for quite a while now, which has always been enough to get tickets, even if they're not very good, to road games and bowls and to the Covid season games. However, with the latest update letter from the A-T fund, my priority rank has jumped up over 1000 places. Since, IIRC, some of the points are based on consecutive years of donating, buying season tix, etc., it seems like there's been a culling of like 25% of the top 4000 or so donors recently.

Probably some of that relates to Clown-era fallout (people dropping their donations or season tickets and dropping in priority as a result) or to people redirecting donations to NIL stuff, but it's still a bad sign that over 25% of the people who are ostensibly more hardcore than I am recently had enough and let themselves fall down the list.

Anybody else seen a similar jump in priority? Thoughts on the state of things?

JRjr
 
vapspwi said:
Even with the advent of the TECH fund seat license stuff, I've kept up with giving a little money each year to the A-T fund, and occasionally give a little extra when there's some kind of special initiative going on. Not a big donor by any means, but I figure that having a middling priority level is occasionally useful.

My A-T rank has sat in the mid-3000s for quite a while now, which has always been enough to get tickets, even if they're not very good, to road games and bowls and to the Covid season games. However, with the latest update letter from the A-T fund, my priority rank has jumped up over 1000 places. Since, IIRC, some of the points are based on consecutive years of donating, buying season tix, etc., it seems like there's been a culling of like 25% of the top 4000 or so donors recently.

Probably some of that relates to Clown-era fallout (people dropping their donations or season tickets and dropping in priority as a result) or to people redirecting donations to NIL stuff, but it's still a bad sign that over 25% of the people who are ostensibly more hardcore than I am recently had enough and let themselves fall down the list.

Anybody else seen a similar jump in priority? Thoughts on the state of things?

JRjr
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That is weird. I'm up to like 1,800 now from about 2,700 last I checked.
 
We have moved down in the rankings the past five years from around 800 to 1,000. I assume it's because others are contributing more to these fundraising campaigns. Also lost a few points from giving up basketball season tickets which we previously had 20 or so years consecutively.
 
vapspwi said:
Even with the advent of the TECH fund seat license stuff, I've kept up with giving a little money each year to the A-T fund, and occasionally give a little extra when there's some kind of special initiative going on. Not a big donor by any means, but I figure that having a middling priority level is occasionally useful.

My A-T rank has sat in the mid-3000s for quite a while now, which has always been enough to get tickets, even if they're not very good, to road games and bowls and to the Covid season games. However, with the latest update letter from the A-T fund, my priority rank has jumped up over 1000 places. Since, IIRC, some of the points are based on consecutive years of donating, buying season tix, etc., it seems like there's been a culling of like 25% of the top 4000 or so donors recently.

Probably some of that relates to Clown-era fallout (people dropping their donations or season tickets and dropping in priority as a result) or to people redirecting donations to NIL stuff, but it's still a bad sign that over 25% of the people who are ostensibly more hardcore than I am recently had enough and let themselves fall down the list.

Anybody else seen a similar jump in priority? Thoughts on the state of things?

JRjr
Click to expand...
i moved from mid 6000s to mid 3000s apparently overnight. i dont donate much but have 25 consecutive yrs on football and alumni credit.
 
Skydog said:
i moved from mid 6000s to mid 3000s apparently overnight. i dont donate much but have 25 consecutive yrs on football and alumni credit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that’s more or less where I’m at - mostly alumni, football, and Roll Call points. Sounds like the number of drop-outs escalated down in the 4000/5000 range, wow.

JRjr
 
I got a big jump too. Same number of points from 5/23 to 11/23 but a 700 jump in rank from below 2500. Lots of boosters dropping out apparently.
 
Perhaps they just purged accounts that haven't had any activity in years (purging dead people?). If I were a new AD, I would be very interested in getting the donor list updated and really seeing what my base looked like.

Simply dropping out and losing 30 or 40 years of tickets is only a drop of like 60-80 pts. That shouldn't be enough for me to jump up 900 spots at the level I'm at. I imagine most of the people above me are quite old.
 
My speculation would be that there were a bunch of zombie accounts that accumulated over the years where donors that passed on were not removed.
 
Okay, it’s explained on the back of the most recent Account Summary.

“New ranking system is in place. Rankings are now calculated based on donors who are active members of the Alexander-Tharpe Fund. An active donor is defined as a donor who has at least 1 consecutive year of giving to Athletics. This change was put in place to more accurately represent individual donor rankings against all other donors who actively give to the Alexander-Tharpe Fund.”

I talked to an A-T rep today. He pointed out the back of the statement info. It’s just what it says. Everybody who didn’t give to athletics last year got dropped out of the rankings.
 
GT76 said:
Okay, it’s explained on the back of the most recent Account Summary.

“New ranking system is in place. Rankings are now calculated based on donors who are active members of the Alexander-Tharpe Fund. An active donor is defined as a donor who has at least 1 consecutive year of giving to Athletics. This change was put in place to more accurately represent individual donor rankings against all other donors who actively give to the Alexander-Tharpe Fund.”

I talked to an A-T rep today. He pointed out the back of the statement info. It’s just what it says. Everybody who didn’t give to athletics last year got dropped out of the rankings.
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They can never figure out how many consecutive years I've donated to roll call. 3 years ago I was at 13 because they f'd up and somehow lost some of my previous years when I moved. 2 years ago I was at 2, should have been at 14. I called and asked how I was at 13 the prior year and a year later I was at 2. They said they'd fix it, got another statement and went up to 9, got 7 of the 12 most recent lost years back. Latest statement I'm at 4, should be 15, at worst should be at 10. It's getting kinda comical. We're a Tech school and we we can't count.
 
I dropped out in the Spring of 2022 after 40 years. Had front row seat in UE sec 204 since the late 80s and donated to the AT Fund and Roll Call every year.

But can’t get down too often (from Fairfax , VA) - once a season and the last couple home games under the previous regime did me in.

Time for some new blood. I came down for L’ville and made it over to Charlottesville and probably going to Dublin. I’m fine buying tix on StubHub on short notice. Shifting the game time inside the 2-week window was another complication - plane tix on short notice is a problem.

I’m still in touch with my AT-Rep but it was time for some of us old guard to free up some choice seats for folks who can show up for every home game.

When Rice was AD, the GTAA would exchange my tickets for points so would send my season tix back as soon as I got them. Braine put a stop to that program over my objection and it always bothered me to sell my extras on Stubhub (except for the dwag game which I always gave to a buddy).

Anyway, CSB, time for you new guys to step up.
 
00Burdell said:
When Rice was AD, the GTAA would exchange my tickets for points so would send my season tix back as soon as I got them. Braine put a stop to that program over my objection and it always bothered me to sell my extras on Stubhub (except for the dwag game which I always gave to a buddy).
Click to expand...

Damn. They got to sell your tickets twice and that was apparently a bad thing.
 
00Burdell said:
When Rice was AD, the GTAA would exchange my tickets for points so would send my season tix back as soon as I got them. Braine put a stop to that program over my objection and it always bothered me to sell my extras on Stubhub (except for the dwag game which I always gave to a buddy).

Anyway, CSB, time for you new guys to step up.
Click to expand...
I did the same in the ‘90’s and ‘00’s by donating football and basketball season tix. It was a win-win in some cases, as they were able to either re-sell the returned tix or allow others to use them with no real loss of revenue and I got some gift-in-kind point credits. They were good seats, but I was unable to use all of them. The football tix were about 40-45 yard LW and the basketball tix were behind the visitors bench about 8 rows up. It took a long time to work my way up to those seats.

I suspect one reason they stopped the credit for ticket returns was due to low or inconsistent demand.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to ranking from year-year, but the A-T statement that just arrived has me just outside the 1000 point level after 40 years of athletic donations and almost 60 years of Roll Call gifts. I don’t remember where I was last year.
 
oldgold68 said:
I suspect one reason they stopped the credit for ticket returns was due to low or inconsistent demand.
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I think they stopped it because Dave Braine was a moron. Pretty much pulled the plug on it as soon as he got here. I specifically asked him to re-instate it but did couldn't care less what anybody else thought.

Glad we have a real AD now. Its been a disaster since Rice left.
 
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