Fundraising and sports

Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: April 8, 2008

The University of Virginia athletics program leads UVa’s fund-raising campaign — but does not dominate. If this were a sports contest, we might say that athletics holds a comfortable lead.
This truth, from survey of how UVa programs are doing roughly halfway through the campaign, shatters the assumption by many people that athletics overwhelms other fundraising efforts.
In fact, two other programs are pacing the leader.
While the UVa Athletics Foundation has reached 78 percent of its goal, the Curry School Foundation has achieved nearly 74 percent and the UVa Health System has reached nearly 71 percent.
Looked at in a different way, the Health System has bested the Athletics Foundation. That program has raised nearly $354 million of its $500 million goal, while the Athletics Foundation has collected a lesser amount: $234 million out of its more modest goal of $300 million. The Curry School has a goal of only (in relative terms) $55 million.
Only a couple of entities come close to these top two leaders in the amount of money they are expected to raise. The College of Arts and Sciences Foundation also has a goal of $500 million, and has collected about 31 percent of that goal. The Board of Visitors and rector are expected to raise nearly $622 million; they are 40 percent of the way there.
Athletics may be ahead in the race to a goal, but — unlike a sports contest — the goals are different for each player.
Larger goals by far are set for several academic programs, suggesting that UVa has not lost sight of its mission and that it is not dominated by sports interests, as is sometimes claimed.
Yes, UVa athletics have gone big time, and that has created problems. Big donors to athletics now get the best season tickets, ahead of loyal fans who have supported the program through thick and thin — to name just one controversy.
On a broader scale, the attention paid to athletics has created the impression that athletics are more important than academics at Mr. Jefferson’s University.
The fundraising numbers hint at a different story.
Indeed, UVa discovered that donations to athletics do not seem to come at the expense of academics.
“Because there had been some concern about that,” said Alison Traub, UVa’s vice president for development, “I had some folks over here run the numbers and it showed that the majority of UVa’s donors give to both academics and athletics” (“The Money of Sports,” The Daily Progress, April 6).
UVa should not grow complacent: Athletics is big business, and the time might come when sports become more important than schooling. That is a national trend that UVa must continue to resist.
So far, it seems, academics is winning.
And that’s as it should be.