BY Steven Dunst
What a week for the Cal athletic department. The Bears now have another reason to thank immortal football coach Jeff Tedford and sign him to a hefty contract extension.
Cal will be able to spend these next few weeks gloating from the mountaintop as No. 1 in the Pac-10. And no, I’m not talking about that little football win up in hippie-town Eugene, Ore. As of last week the Bears are firmly ahead of the Trojans and the rest of the conference in one area, one that is far more unlikely in my mind than football—fundraising. The Chronicle of Higher Education last week released a report putting the Cal athletic department at the helm of the Pac-10 with $34.7 million received in charitable donations. That number was good enough for eighth in the country, less than $3 million behind third-ranked Florida. And Assistant Athletic Director for Development David Rosselli said that had the organization issued a report last year, Cal would have been ranked first in the nation.
Look at the turnaround in the program between 2002 and present. Overall fundraising—which encompasses more than just charitable donations—in the year from 2002-2003 yielded just under $8.5 million, according to a marketing report done by the Cal athletic department. From 2005-2006, the total surged to over $68 million. That’s roughly an 800% increase in three years for those of you math majors keeping track. Tedford is almost as responsible for this resurgence as he is for the Bears’ on-field performance.
It isn’t hard to pinpoint the roots of this fundraising turnaround. In 2002 the Bears football team was 7-5 and just recently emerging from the conference’s doldrums. Now, Cal is undefeated and, not coincidentally, the athletic department is well on its way to fully funding the proposed $125 million Student-Athlete High Performance Center. “The football team brings tremendous momentum not just to the athletic program but to the entire institution,” Rosselli said. “We have a captive audience now. People want to be a part of that success.” They do that by donating money—lots of it as of late. The equation is quite simple. Football brings unrivaled national television exposure, brings thousands of alumni to Memorial Stadium for games week after week, and gets the alumni engaged in the university. Having another Noble-prize winning professor doesn’t have quite the same effect.
The football team’s success has enabled an important change of strategy. The athletic department has finally realized that instead of trying to hopelessly rely on state funding, which entails a bureaucratic headache and seemingly inevitable public outcry, tapping into the pockets of over 450,000 alumni might not be such a failed venture after all. “For years there was relief coming from the state so graduates didn’t feel they were needed,” Rosselli said. “Now it’s changed. It takes awhile to develop a philanthropy culture like at USC for example, where from the moment students step on campus they’re being groomed to give back.” The fundraising campaigns for Haas Pavilion and the high performance center both relied on support from private donors, who have come out of the woodwork in record numbers ready to contribute. It all comes back to football. So while Cal football coach Jeff Tedford might not want to acknowledge the importance of the Bears’ No. 3 ranking, rest assured that everyone else in the athletic department is jumping for joy. People want to donate money when they can reap the benefits and believe that their contributions make a substantial impact. The only way to get that message across is by winning games on the football field. That’s when alums go to work trash-talking their Michigan friends and feeling so proud about their third-ranked Bears that they feel obligated to write another $10,000 check to the athletic department. So next time you see Tedford walking by, don’t forget to thank him. He’s the best fundraiser this university has.
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