Facilities

[FWalum]

Wow...that's some pretty lofty smack 1314 against a program you are a whopping 17-68 against lifetime, and haven't beaten in 11 years, but whatever makes you feel good.

I won't come on your board and start a yanker measuring contest..I will leave that to the UNI boy, but a UNI and Valpo fan dissing Evansville in a thread titled "facilities" is more than amusing.

As the parent of an Evansville grad and a former member of the UE Parent's board, I have enjoyed my affiliation with the school and some of the administrators there.  Loved going to games at Roberts, unfortunately that was during the Steve Merfeld years.  Perhaps you would be interested in the unique Valpo connection to the 1977 plane crash involving the Evansville basketball program (it was first reported that Valpo's plane had crashed) which can be found here on the Union Street Hoops Podcast #44.

[ml2]

In terms of our alumni, WHY DOE VU72 and many others assume our alumni are less wealthy than Drake and Bradley?   

The best source I have seen on alumni wealth is this database at the New York Times, which I think is pulled from a large academic paper based on tax filings.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/valparaiso-university

Bradley does look pretty similar to Valpo, but most of the other private schools in the MVC (as well as others that often get mentioned as models on this board) do seem to have significantly larger pools of top 1% and top 5% people to hopefully draw large and/or lead donors from. Although UNI, which apparently is having incredible fundraising success, has by far the worst percentages, but perhaps when multiplied out by a larger alumni base it still results in a larger sized pool of wealthy donors? I am not sure how much bigger UNIs alumni population is compared to the other schools on the list. If you are curious about any other schools that I didn't list, you can search for thousands of them at the site. The numbers I pulled are from the "Outcomes" section. Also interesting to look at is how wealthy the families of current students are, which is likely to be a pretty good indicator of what kind of pool of future donors each university will have to rely on 20 to 40 years from now.

Alumni in Top 1%
Loyola...3.9%
Xavier...3.7%
Drake...3.5%
Gonzaga...3.3%
Butler...2.8%
Valpo...2.3%
Bradley...2.3%
Evansville...1.7%
UNI...1.3%

Alumni in Top 5%
Drake...23%
Butler...22%
Loyola...17%
Gonzaga...17%
Xavier...15%
Bradley...14%
Valpo...13%
Evansville...7.8%
UNI...7.3%

(modified post to add Evansville, bad oversight on my part)

[crusadermoe]

Yep, start the clock.  You need to raise the construction money in ADDITION to  the endowment.   Rec Center is probably a bigger enrollment and revenue impact than ARC improvements. 

The "Forever" endowment campaign, as I have pointed out before, is moving really slowly and may take FOREVER. 

I didn't pounce yet one other part of the Financial Statements.......the amount of ACTUAL cash pledged to endowment.  Despite all the hype around the total campaign goal, the amount of new cash raised to the endowment is REALLY underwhelming.   I think it was $12 million outstanding cash payable in next 2-5 years.   Folks, at that amount we very gradually build up to a peak of $500,000 in new spendable cash per year.  It sounds like a lot, but it is NOT in the realm of a $130 million dollar budget.   

How about 25 new students at $20,000 apiece in net tuition?...and DO IT NOW??   The answer to the fiscal strains is in enrollment.........endowment is a long-term solution.  We can't wait around for that impact on the budget.   Long-term means 10-20 years.   If you want a more vigorous place, you have to enroll more students.....FAST! 

[VUGrad1314]

I keep going back and forth with my opinion on Heckler vis a vis commitment to athletics. Because we haven't seen the sweeping changes to the athletic facilities that we're seeing at other schools and are demanding ourselves it's easy to get caught up in thinking the administration doesn't care enough but if you aggregate everything he's done for athletics over his tenure it really is quite impressive. We're a lot better off than we were 10 years ago that's for sure.  Furthermore we have one of the best ADs we could ask for and I'm not sure he gets the credit he deserves. He's a big reason behind Valpo's tremendous improvement these past 25 years and I look forward to seeing where he'll take our programs next. I believe in our leadership and trust that my faith will be rewarded.

[FWalum]

I think that, much like our buildings, a big problem with athletic facilities has been waiting too long for the lead donor.

I wish we were moving faster for sure BUT:
if we look at athletics as a bigger picture we have seen: The installation of the new track. Face lifts of all locker rooms and weigh rooms, installing air conditioning in our practice facilities. A new softball field, updated tennis courts, and now an upgraded baseball field. Not to mention a new gym floor, a multi-million dollar recruiting endowment for basketball and internal upgrades to the ARC.

Now, very little of those are exciting, to be sure, but we need to walk before we can crawl. I have also heard that the order is coming from the top down that efforts need to be made to increase campus wide school spirit and engagement with our sporting events to match the increase in intensity of the MVC. I would also point to our football team as a sign of how, with good hires and cultivation of alumni with a little patience, success will come. I have put the administration on a bit of an internal clock which is: if we don't have an actual plan for the rec center by the end of next year to start fundraising around/or with at least one decent lead donor than I'd say we will be squandering success. But to have a blueprint out there to excite students and potential recruits as well as alumni it will make it easier to swallow a 4 year timeline before it's a reality. 2 years to fundraise, 2 years to build.

How many of you have talked recently to Ben Boggs?  Ben has been out barnstorming as the new Assistant Director of Annual Giving and I was pleasantly surprised to hear that things might be moving along on the Rec Center.  Has anyone else gotten that indication?

[vu72]

Let's be honest, VULB62 nails it.   Comparisons to the state schools is a fruitless waste of  time.  Comparison to Evansville is dead on the mark.   

E-Villan nails the reasons Evansville is lacking.  The last two presidents were more interested in international students and..(the arts?.).I have.no time to look at the prior posts).  Anyway his point is that neither of the two recent Presidents had a passion for athletics.  Heckler is in year #10. Not new by any means.  Does that sound familiar? 

In terms of our alumni, WHY DOE VU72 and many others assume our alumni are less wealthy than Drake and Bradley?   Could it also be the skill of the VU fund-raising team?  I have heard of many Valpo alumni who either have big wealth or have close connections to those people.  But they never get any contact.  Even blind squirrels find nuts. 

So why can't VU raise more dollars and a bigger pie to divide among projects university wide?  They didn't raise gifts for  the buildings as our financial statements demonstrate.  Based on our last 8 years of performance in fund-raising, I see a bigger likelihood that our basketball team rises up in the standings than our fund-raisers can move up in comparison to Drake, Bradley, and Evansvile.  Those are all schools where we compare in size and US News rank.

Is it time to ask why our alumni outreach and fund-raising sucks?  How many attend the alumni events in our key cities?  Time to smoke out those answers.

I'll bite. Where did you get that idea?  Valpo has plenty of wealthy and very successful alumni.  The problem with a small school isn't that there aren't successful alumni, it is that the entire alumni base is small. Having said that, Valpo just raised over 750,000 in the Day of Giving.  The other problem is that you can only go to the well so many times.  As noted, some of the recent projects were done with borrowed funds but others were done with cash.  The library, the Union, the VUCA, and all the athletic projects mentioned.

I have said it before, and I am sure the athletic fund raisers are busy working on the lead donor, but, you don't want to distract from a current drive by instituting another.  The board feels endowment is critical.  Lacking a lead donor for athletics, I don't think the University will roll out a major fund raising drive for anything new until the current drive is complete.

In the meantime, fund raising needs to be done for completing the broadcast capabilities for softball and baseball.  Remember that over a half-million was spent just to update the ARC broadcasts.  And as for the basketball facilities, I'm pretty sure the entire basketball wing was redone last year.

For reference, here are the fund drives and funds raised over the last 25 years:

Lighting the Way--$36 million

Three Goals, One Promise--$122 million

Our Valpo, Our Time--$236 million

Forever Valpo--$250 million ($180 million raised to date)

That's $574 million, not counting the annual funds raised, from an alumni base of about 50,000.  Loyola, in comparison, has an alumni base of about 130,000.

[crusader05]

I have definitely gotten the vibe that Athletics is at the forefront of people's minds. Both by things people have said and by the fact that there hasn't been talk of any new academic stuff around. I've heard more about attendance, rec center, and our move to the Valley than about any other advancement project.

The endowment is important because it's long-term and will over time continue to alleviate pressure on our fiscal budget. It's a necessary piece to allow more freedom to fundraise for other things and also to not be constrained by yearly budgets

[usc4valpo]

I work with a lot great UNI alums. As sports fans, many of them have more loyalty with the Iowa Hawkeyes, which are totally different fan breed.

[UNIFTW]

In terms of our alumni, WHY DOE VU72 and many others assume our alumni are less wealthy than Drake and Bradley?   

The best source I have seen on alumni wealth is this database at the New York Times, which I think is pulled from a large academic paper based on tax filings.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/valparaiso-university

Bradley does look pretty similar to Valpo, but most of the other private schools in the MVC (as well as others that often get mentioned as models on this board) do seem to have significantly larger pools of top 1% and top 5% people to hopefully draw large and/or lead donors from. Although UNI, which apparently is having incredible fundraising success, has by far the worst percentages, but perhaps when multiplied out by a larger alumni base it still results in a larger sized pool of wealthy donors? I am not sure how much bigger UNIs alumni population is compared to the other schools on the list. If you are curious about any other schools that I didn't list, you can search for thousands of them at the site. The numbers I pulled are from the "Outcomes" section. Also interesting to look at is how wealthy the families of current students are, which is likely to be a pretty good indicator of what kind of pool of future donors each university will have to rely on 20 to 40 years from now.

Alumni in Top 1%
Loyola...3.9%
Xavier...3.7%
Drake...3.5%
Gonzaga...3.3%
Butler...2.8%
Valpo...2.3%
Bradley...2.3%
Evansville...1.7%
UNI...1.3%

Alumni in Top 5%
Drake...23%
Butler...22%
Loyola...17%
Gonzaga...17%
Xavier...15%
Bradley...14%
Valpo...13%
Evansville...7.8%
UNI...7.3%

(modified post to add Evansville, bad oversight on my part)

UNI is known, nationally, for 2 things (excluding athletics): our tremendous teaching program and our highly regarded business/accounting/CPA and MBA programs. The only PhD UNI offers is an EdD. We don't have a law school. We don't have pre law. We don't have med school or pre med or most biology programs that doctors start in. We have some engineering but it's not the forefront of our university.

We don't produce a ton of people that will go into jobs making 150,000 or more.

UNI knows what it does and it does it very well. Almost to a fault and detraction of other programs. Our nicest - by far - academic buildings are the Curris Business Center and Schindler Education Building.

The issue in Iowa and being a state school is the BoR tries to keep duplication of majors and top programs down. Iowa has law and medicine. Iowa State has engineering, ag and a hell of a vet school. That leaves UNI - the Iowa State Normal School as we were founded as - with business, education and social work. Not a ton of money coming out of those areas for 99% of graduates. UNI does have one of the best Mental Health Counseling masters programs  programs in the country and one of the first 3 accredited nationally back in the day but Iowa and Iowa State get the PhD programs.

That would explain those numbers pretty easily. We have some very high ranking people in the business world - but with over a million living alumni it's tough to have enough teachers, social workers and accountants making 150k+ per year to get that number higher.

Drake doesn't have those worries because they aren't state controlled. They can run a med and law program. They also run such a poor business program it lost accreditation a few years back.


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[usc4valpo]

UNI is a great school for education, the only problem is jobs in education in Iowa are very limited compared to most states. Most graduates move out of state. It makes you wonder if Iowa is spending collegeic money in the right place.

[UNIFTW]

UNI is a great school for education, the only problem is jobs in education in Iowa are very limited compared to most states. Most graduates move out of state. It makes you wonder if Iowa is spending collegeic money in the right place.

I wouldn't say most - and this is a recent phenomena. UNI has always really been Iowa's real "state university of Iowa". By percentage UNI educates more Iowans and keeps more graduates in Iowa than either of the other two. Historically something like 80% of UNI grads stay in Iowa. Iowa has a tuition forgiveness for teachers to keep them in Iowa and get them in needy districts. However, that's changing for political reasons and I hate politics so I'll leave it at that.

You live in DSM so you can correct me but much of what is causing DSM and a Cedar Rapids and Des Moines to boom is banking and insurance. UNI grads flock to those places in massive numbers because of it.

The issue isn't spending money at the university on the wrong programs - it's the state of Iowa and their general governmental approach to what and how to find things. Education and public and social health services aren't on that list sadly.

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[crusader05]

I'd think the big cache thing you have if we do get a lead donor for the rec center is the naming rights. Much more exciting than an academic building.

Many of Valpo's donors of old seem to have been centered around people who are involved in the Lutheran Church and also maybe with successful non-profits. I can also think of the Christophers who founded(?) Pampered Chef.  The engineering program benefited from having someone high up in Caterpillar from the University. I would like to believe that our recent investment in both Engineering and Business will reap rewards in the future. As well as our Meteorology programs transition to also embrace the broadcasting aspect. Finally the addition of the PA program and embrace of upping our science tech should maybe help us with pre-med students. But all of these are a long way off still.

I have also heard that there are wealthy young alums in the Chicago Area that the University has been working to woo as well.

[vu72]

I'd think the big cache thing you have if we do get a lead donor for the rec center is the naming rights. Much more exciting than an academic building.

Many of Valpo's donors of old seem to have been centered around people who are involved in the Lutheran Church and also maybe with successful non-profits. I can also think of the Christophers who founded(?) Pampered Chef.  The engineering program benefited from having someone high up in Caterpillar from the University. I would like to believe that our recent investment in both Engineering and Business will reap rewards in the future. As well as our Meteorology programs transition to also embrace the broadcasting aspect. Finally the addition of the PA program and embrace of upping our science tech should maybe help us with pre-med students. But all of these are a long way off still.

I have also heard that there are wealthy young alums in the Chicago Area that the University has been working to woo as well.

yes, the Christophers founded Pampered Chef and sold it to Warren Buffet and yes, that "high up" in Caterpillar was Don Fites, the retired CEO.  I think you are on to something about older alums.  Remember that in the 70's, 75% of students were Lutheran and many went into teaching, the Clergy etc.  Heck, we had a total dorm dedicated to just Deaconesses!  Times have changed.  We now have highly regarded business, engineering and nursing colleges together with many alums in broadcasting, particularly meteorology.  All good, but will take some time for more to achieve at high levels financially.

[valpo64]

FWalum I agree on your assessment of Ben Boggs visit and comments on the Rec center...time will tell.

[crusadermoe]

Thanks for re-capping the fund drive, VU72.    Your facts are great and opinions well taken, though sometimes we disagree.   

Pasted below is your re-cap. I have inserted BOLD NOTES. 

For reference, here are the fund drives and funds raised over the last 25 years:


Lighting the Way--$36 million  -               HARRE - early 90s
Three Goals, One Promise--$122 million   HARRE -late 90s
Our Valpo, Our Time--$236 million  -        HARRE 2005-2009  (Heckler began in 2008)

Forever Valpo--$250 million ($180 m to date)  - HECKLER 2010 through... ..2023?      (chapel renovation gift  of $15m is wrapped in)

That's $574 million, not counting the annual funds raised, from an alumni base of about 50,000.  Loyola, in comparison, has an alumni base of about 130,000.



« Last Edit: Today at 10:11:22 AM by vu72 »

[crusader05]

Crusadermoe:
Did you include the New Welcome center as I believe that was fully funded through donations as well as the Fites Engineering Center which would be another 18 million raised through donations outside of the Forever Valpo Fund.

Also the Track, which I am not sure if it falls under Forever Valpo or not

[vu72]

Crusadermoe:
Did you include the New Welcome center as I believe that was fully funded through donations as well as the Fites Engineering Center which would be another 18 million raised through donations outside of the Forever Valpo Fund.

Also the Track, which I am not sure if it falls under Forever Valpo or not

The Fites Addition was part of Our Valpo Our Time campaign.  The track is part of Forever Valpo and The Welcome Center was, I believe, outside any campaign as it was dedicated in 2013.  The Dussenberg's contributed $ 5 million for the building.

[VULB#62]

Wasn't the track part of the FITT initiative?

[vu72]

Wasn't the track part of the FITT initiative?

It was, but was never funded.  It rolled into the current raise, at least it is stated as such.

[ml2]

Annual funds are counted in the campaign totals.

[bbtds]

Two rhumbs way up!

I had to look it up.

rhumb

nounNAUTICAL
plural noun: rhumbs
1.
an imaginary line on the earth's surface cutting all meridians at the same angle, used as the standard method of plotting a ship's course on a chart.
2.
any of the 32 points of the compass.

If you have two rhumbs up does that change the shape of the earth?

[78crusader]

I've been out of town on business for a while, so this was probably covered in another post -- but President Heckler gave his end-of-the-semester radio interview on April 30.  He mentioned that the university is done with renovation projects for now (the Neils renovation must be finished -- I doubt the renovation of that building was very extensive) and attention will now turn to the roads around campus.  From what I have seen (particularly the road leading onto campus from Sturdy on the east side of campus) that will be money well spent. 

There was no mention of fundraising for new facilities.  At least I don't recall any discussion on that topic.  I suspect, though, that the university is quietly working on funding for the fieldhouse. 

Paul

[NativeCheesehead]

So quiet even they don't know about it.

[vu72]

I've been out of town on business for a while, so this was probably covered in another post -- but President Heckler gave his end-of-the-semester radio interview on April 30.  He mentioned that the university is done with renovation projects for now (the Neils renovation must be finished -- I doubt the renovation of that building was very extensive) and attention will now turn to the roads around campus.  From what I have seen (particularly the road leading onto campus from Sturdy on the east side of campus) that will be money well spent. 

There was no mention of fundraising for new facilities.  At least I don't recall any discussion on that topic.  I suspect, though, that the university is quietly working on funding for the fieldhouse. 

Paul

Do you have a link to the interview?

[UNIfan]

I'll just throw out my honest opinion. Not gonna pretend to know the financial situation. Also not sure how the UNI vs Valpo argument got so deep, borderline comical. Way too complex for any of us to be trying to draw conclusions/comparisons about tuition and funding and all that. Apples and oranges sounds about right.

Anyways,

Making the Arc pretty should be priority number one. It doesn't look good on TV right now. Dial back on the seating and model Loyola if you must. Nothing impressive about Gentile, but at least it looks like an honest to goodness venue you should be paying money to visit. You don't have to sacrifice the history or intimate feel of the place to get it looking like a real arena.