"Gator Gala is biggest single UF fundraiser"
This doesn't have anything to do with this coming week's readings, but I thought some might be interested in reading this Gainesville Sun article about this year's Gator Gala, celebrating 100 years of Florida football.
Some interesting facts/highlights of the article:
- $50,000 a table for attendees
- $5 million raised (100 donors including Emmitt Smith)
- Money goes to "endowed athletic scholarships for Gators in every sport."
- UF spends 4 percent of endowed funds every year, "aiming to recover those expenditures through investments and thereby making the endowment 'permanent'."
- 416 Gators on athletic scholarships this year totalling $6.9 million
- UF's capital campaign aims to raise $1.2 billion by 2012 -- this goal "places UF in unchartered fundraising terrority, looking for a single donor who will give $75 million to help complete the 'gift pyramid'."
- UF's largest donation = $15 million given by Evelyn & William McKnight to the Brain Institute.
This week we talked about accountability as far as making sure donations go where they are expected to go. Danny Ponce, Gator Gala organizer, said he "wanted to ensure donors that their money would go toward scholarships and not simply be blown on an extravagant event. He estimates that tonight's party will cost about '10 percent of what we've raised,' but said all teh expenses are being covered by corporate sponors and not donors' funds for scholarships."
What do you all think about the Gator Gala? What do you think about this "gift pyramid" or do you know anything about it?
posted by Anonymous @ 12:52 PM
2 Comments:
At 7:41 PM, September 29, 2006,
Richard said…
Ah, the gift pyramid. More fun than a barrel of monkeys (okay, I'm still a bit buzzed from the post-question bottle of wine).
Normally, I'd save it for my fundraising class, but I'll be glad to highlight what a gift pyramid is this coming week in class---unless anyone else would like to venture a guess or remembers what it is from Dr. Kelly's fundraising class.
At 8:16 PM, October 02, 2006,
Giselle said…
As someone who used to plan fundraising events for a living, this article absolutely blew me away. The astronomical scale of the sponsorships amazed me...I mean, seriously $50,000 per table? That's ridiculous for a town this size -- so I'd be interested to see how many of the sponsors actually live in Gainesville. I'd also be very interested to see the sponsorship materials they used, specifically how they sold this big ticket event to donors. This obviously wasn't marketed to Joe Schmo UF Booster.
I agree with Candice's comment about how this event falls into the greater capital campaign scheme. For some reason, I assumed that athletics was a separate entity as far as this was concerned, as they've got a pretty powerful fundraising mechanism in place already. When I think capital campaign, I think of things contained under an academic umbrella...but I could be totally off on this.
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