Are you ready for some football?
Okay so college football is back (thank the gods above, and Go Dawgies!). But there's no team more thankful this week than the Oklahoma State Cowboys. This past summer, OSU athletics received a donation of $165 million to the program from one donor, Mr. Boone Pickens. To put it in perspective, OSU atheletics usually raised around $7 million per year.
Two very interesting points of view are brought up in the article and in the letters to the editor that USA Today received after running the story:
(1) Given the magnitude of this gift, what power will Pickens have in the nonprofit-donor relationship? What happens if OSU continues to be among the worst in the Big 12 athletics (avg. 9th in the league standings)? One former team member commented "The winning better come."
(2) The article quotes faculty members at OSU who criticized the gift because of its focus on academics, and letters to the editor attempt to shame Pickens for not giving to Nicaragua families and educational scholarships. Who are they to criticize someone else's charitable donation? People are certainly well within their rights to donate to any cause they want, and amateur athletics falls within the realm of the nonprofit sector. OSU's president even says in the article, "I'm getting ready to do a huge campaign for student scholarships, and I can go to donors and say, 'Look what Boone did to help us with athletics. Can you help us with academics?'"
If you were the university, how would you respond to the criticism of the gift?
Two very interesting points of view are brought up in the article and in the letters to the editor that USA Today received after running the story:
(1) Given the magnitude of this gift, what power will Pickens have in the nonprofit-donor relationship? What happens if OSU continues to be among the worst in the Big 12 athletics (avg. 9th in the league standings)? One former team member commented "The winning better come."
(2) The article quotes faculty members at OSU who criticized the gift because of its focus on academics, and letters to the editor attempt to shame Pickens for not giving to Nicaragua families and educational scholarships. Who are they to criticize someone else's charitable donation? People are certainly well within their rights to donate to any cause they want, and amateur athletics falls within the realm of the nonprofit sector. OSU's president even says in the article, "I'm getting ready to do a huge campaign for student scholarships, and I can go to donors and say, 'Look what Boone did to help us with athletics. Can you help us with academics?'"
If you were the university, how would you respond to the criticism of the gift?
posted by Richard @ 11:28 AM
4 Comments:
At 11:53 AM, September 04, 2006,
Giselle said…
I agree with all the above comments. It's Mr. Pickens' hard-earned $165 million, and he can do with it what he likes. True, people might argue that it could serve the "greater good" as a donation to a more philanthropic cause, but it's not for you and me to decide. My brief stint at the UF Foundation this summer taught me that university donors choose to give for a wide variety of reasons. For example, Curtis Phillips (as in the Phillips Center) had no previous ties to UF until he saw a production of Beauty and the Beast On Ice (or something along those lines) at the Performing Arts Center. He was so moved that he decided to donate a piece of land worth millions, which resulted in the Phillips Center's construction.
Point being, it's entirely possible that a gift seen as frivolous by some naysayers could very well do good things for OSU. It will allow them to upgrade facilities, offer new scholarships, and be competitive in ways they hadn't been able to before. A better record could lead to national exposure in a bowl game, which in turn could expose the university to previously unreached publics (such as other donors, as well as prospective students and researchers) and bring in additional financial gains. If not for donors such as Ben Hill Griffin and Gale Lemerand (another major donor with no real ties to the university), it could be argued that the UF athletic program may not have enjoyed some of their past successes.
At 4:47 PM, September 04, 2006,
Richard said…
I just got back from Disneyworld, and I must say that "Beauty and the Beast" on ice was one great show!
That being said, I just thought I'd throw it out there that in all the studies that have ever looked at collegiate sports perforamce and donations to the university, there has never been any correlation.
Barbara Miles, one of the VPs at the UF Foundation and leader of the current capital campaign, actually said she experienced a slight decrease in the months after the basketball championship.
To those of you who have said that OSU should just ignore the critics, let me ask this: from an organizational public relations perspective (not a personal one), can you really just ignore criticisms in national media?
At 6:29 PM, September 04, 2006,
Paul Jonas said…
I think it makes an interesting point on the business models of super successful universities. I tend to disfavor the critics of the gift for the simple reason of looking at our college here.
Let me back up. UF is a sports-first university - a football college. Sports is where the money is at. It's the same story at the high school level, too. Because of the money and students brought in by having a premier sports program there is more funding for the rest of the school. Sometimes it is better to give indirectly than directly.
Provided the additional money can afford a better sports program, and I do think it will since it sounds like they had great talent but it was short lived due to lack of funds, the school will inevitably be getting more applications from students allowing it to be more picky in the choosing process.
I think an interesting thing to watch for in the future is touched on in the second-to-last paragraph of article - using this gift as a fund raising tool. I'd like to see a follow-up next year and find out if they were able to successfully implement a sort of "bandwagon" approach to fundraising for the academic side. Should that be the case, then Boon Pickens' gift was a gift to academics as well.
At 10:00 PM, September 04, 2006,
austin said…
"From an organizational public relations perspective (not a personal one), can you really just ignore criticisms in national media?" Criticism on the national level can never really be ignored as learned from crisis communications tactics. I forget the exact techniques (I'll have them remembered before I take my comps), but the overriding idea is that when faced with accusations, full disclosure of what you know is a good practice.
In this case, OSU officials (the academic ones) can sympathize with the critics and wish that Mr. Pickens would have given to both the athletic programs and the university, but they understand that an individual has the right to give to whatever cause they wish, and hopefully those that would normally give to the athletic program will recognize that Mr. Pickens' donation will support that program for many years and they can donate their money to the university to aid academic pursuits and achievements.
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