While I am quite happy Virginia Tech will be voting on September 30 to approve a 229.2 million increase in athletics funding from fiscal 2026 to 2029, I am somewhat amused by the constant questioning about “where is the money coming from?”
The answer, if you look at the details, is easy. It looks like it’s coming from “YOU.”
Of that $229 million, $120 million will come from a fundraising campaign, meaning 52.4 percent of the total is money the Hokies have to convince you and me to contribute.
That’s a great deal if you can get it, but a reasonable man might ask how you expect to raise $120 million in additional donations over the next four years when you were not able to raise that amount of money the LAST four years.
Of the $109 million coming from institutional support, some of that is just raising student activity fees. Assuming over the next 4 years that ends up being roughly $40 million (it could be less), that means 70 percent of this $229 million is either coming from YOU or your children via this higher student fee, and as I remember back from my days having a daughter in Blacksburg, that still means the money is coming from YOU.
The rest is suppose to come from bridge financing, and I’m not sure exactly what they mean by that. Bridge financing is typically a temporary move made to tide you over until you can find permanent funds; if you buy a house, hope to make the downpayment from the sale of your previous home, and that deal falls through, you would get a bridge loan from the bank. Which would be temporary until your previous home did sell.
That sounds to me like the University is going to do some left pocket/right pocket moves in the budgeting process to make these numbers work, but this is not a permanent commitment. They’re buying time until the donations pour in.
It’s a plan, that’s for sure. But if I was signing off on this deal, there’s a few things I’d want to know. Like what you’re going to be doing differently in the next four years to raise funds that you weren’t doing the last four years? Are you strategically going after a specific type of donor? Are you bringing in professional fund raisers?
What’s the plan, I’d be asking, other than a pledge to pedal faster and hope for the best?
I’ve mentioned in a previous article my concern for coming up with a proper structure that identifies the fix for the core problem – being a lot better in football – and I’d kind of like to see what that structure is, who the man is at the top making the decisions on how that money is spent, and how quickly fans will see a return on their investment.
I mean, if the University was funding all $229 million, that’s one thing. But if over half of it is coming from alumni and donors, there’s an inverse relationship to how much money gets raised vs. how transparent Hokie Athletics is with the process.
If, for example, you told me all about this new structure and the new hires that will be made to allow this to work, and it all made sense to me, I might be inclined to make a donation.
If, conversely, you didn’t tell me any details, I might believe the plan isn’t all that well thought out, it may include using some of the same people that got us in this mess in the first place, and I might have some reservations about how quickly I’d see a return on my investment. And then I might be inclined to wait a while before deciding on making a donation.
So it will be an interesting week before the Sept. 30 meeting. The numbers look nice.
But the devil is going to be in the details.
