Clearly more evidence of the fury over the Crusader!
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Because of the dedicated attention, passion, and support of torchbearers like you, Valpo Day 2024 was tremendously successful! We enjoyed seeing all of the ways you are #ProudToBeValpo and illuminate the world around you. We are thrilled to announce that we have exceeded our 2,236 donor goal with 2,587 donors and our $1.1M goal with $1,180,365 dollars raised! Valpo Day was born out of a desire to unite our campus with the larger community and celebrate the Beacons who shine brightly among us. Your enthusiastic support of our beloved University was both record-breaking and tremendously inspiring. Thank you for helping us to reach further, together. |
Why is this evidence of the fury over the Crusader? Perhaps I am misreading the intent of your comment (i.e., that you are being ironic).
I agree with 84 here. Either you are being ironic (In which case Do ThIs To CoNvEy irony) or prehaps there were other fundraisers that did better in the past. The Crusader should be a dead topic by now...
vu72 is just being sarcastic, as he has mentioned several times that the Beacons vs. Crusaders debate was overblown
Sorry folks! Yes, I was being sarcastic.
Despite that, I am curious to see how this valpo day was successful compared to previous valpo days. I wonder if that info is publicaly available at this time.
Despite that, I am curious to see how this valpo day was successful compared to previous valpo days. I wonder if that info is publicly available at this time.
With this year's numbers, the Valpo Day total for 11 years is $8,700,000. Each year the total amount of giving reported seems to rise slightly, complementing the university's marginally elevated stated goal. As you suggest, the details when made public will be more revealing. Last year, a single anonymous donor gave $275,000, a gift which was included as a Valpo Day contribution. It will be interesting to see if such a large gift was included in the total again this year.
Also, in the breakdown for last year, athletics received more than $270,000 ($170,000 specified for men's basketball). Although I support athletics in other ways, I have targeted my Valpo Day giving over the years for academics, and I would be curious to see the division of funds for various departments or programs on campus. I applaud all who participated in the giving!
@valpopal Last I saw of the total for MBB it was only about 2k. I do not know if there is an issue in the calculations or if this was the "bonus" money from completing challenges, but with MBB being the "breadwinner" and media outlet for the school, this seems disappointing if I am right with the numbers.
Men's Basketball did very little social media around the challenge based on what I saw. Athletics is always well represented in Valpo day because the individual sports do lots of outreach to alumni and on social and with the hourly campaigns you saw a lot of engagement. I also feel I saw more individual academic department outreach to alums which was new. In the past I feel outside of general requests you didn't see specific solicitations as much. As far as having a handful of large donors. That doesn't surprise me. Any campaign usually has larger donors behind it to help create matching challenges or to provided the "bonus" money for the different departments or, for bigger capital campaigns, to help the sense of momentum that encourage others to open up their pockets.
More individual departments may have done targeted challenges to alums from their programs because of the announcement about programs on the chopping block. I did donate to the cross country and track programs, even though my donation was small, but honestly, I would like to see more emails or letters from the individual departments around campus to update us on things that we don't see posted about in social media or on the website. It will be interesting to see how things build in 2024-25, and donations come in stronger, as we hear more about the prospective cuts around campus.
Sadly, the Athletic Department as a whole went from $270k last year to under $100k this year. Beacon92 mentioned BB as not being that prominent in promoting it. I’d add that FB did very little as well. I don’t know about other sports. I’d also suggest that the timing of Small’s sudden resignation did not help things as the campaign fell right in the midst of post-resignation transition.
Here is one area for 2025 where the Athletic Department, overall, and each individual coach needs to step up well in advance of the Day of Giving and heavily promote it to their respective constituencies.
This seems like speculation to me. Yes, the amount raised on Valpo Day for Athletics was lower. However, last year Valpo Day it was immediately after the hiring of Roger Powell as head coach. It is entirely possible that one donor (or a small group of donors) made large donation right after Powell was announced and that was included in last year's total. The fact that this donation did not happen again is not a signal that the coaches or development office were not doing their job in promoting the Day.
