I just received an email from the athletic department giving more clarification on the season ticket situation. Here are the options they laid out:
1) Keep Jumping and convert your 2020 ticket purchase and per-seat gift into a tax-deductible donation for 2020 and receive 5x Priority Points for your gift
2) Credit your ticket purchase toward a pre-paid account that can be used to buy future football game tickets in 2020 or 2021 while either leaving your per-seat gift in 2020 and earning 5x Priority Points for your gift or crediting your per-seat gift toward 2021
3) Receive a refund on your ticket purchase and/or per-seat gift
They also announced the "Keep Jumping" campaign to get people to donate more to help them through this financial crisis.
What is everybody's thoughts on which option you are going to choose? They are specifically asking people to choose option 1 if possible.
Comments
Anyone have any more in on how the 5x Priority Points work?
I just turned my $800 season ticket purchase into 80 points if that answers your question.
If you click the button at the bottom of the email it takes you to a page with a calculator to see how many points you would receive if you rolled your purchase into a donation.
Letter mentioned potential $50 mil shortfall. Yikes
Made a comment about this in a previous thread, but I think best case scenario, the Athletic Dept brings in $20m less this year than last year. Worst case we lose $70m in revenue.
Left out of this post is that you can also earn 2X points on new donations through September 30th.
Interesting.
Seems like if they really need more donations, that's the way to go. Why only through Sep 30th? Will they be sending out some emails to everyone to let them know?
It has been getting harder and harder to itemize, so I wonder if that's having any effect on charitable contributions.
You give a deadline which is semi-urgent which gives them a decent baseline to check where they/the world are and determine what next steps should be regarding next and future goals.
I am not a season ticket holder. If I was, I would give them this year's donation and credit the tickets toward 2021. Depending on how the economy plays out over next year, I would try to bump my 2021 gift up to account for the missing 2020 ticket value.
That is what I did. I was actually surprised that they offered to credit the per seat donation until next year, however the kicker is if you do that you lose your years of continuous giving credit.
So they kept my $1800 donation and credited the ticket amount till next year. The 5 times bonus was a nice kicker I wasn't expecting.
I mean, if you can swing it, do option 1.
For club seats, that is a hefty donation for no games.
I think a better option would be to allow people to reduce their donation.
While I see your point, I'm guessing that would open things up to more conversations with individual donors and would take even more effort. If you wanted to reduce your donation, you could request the refund and then go donate what you can afford (and I suspect get the 2x Priority points bonus mentioned above).
FYI: I spoke to the ticket office a few hours ago and was told you can do partial donations and then refund the rest. Unless you're in dire financial straits, there really is no reason NOT to donate, at least in part.
Nice, good information. Thanks!
This is potentially a way to get some bookoo points. I don't think points are typically given out for tickets other than a couple of small ones for consecutive years of giving or something along those lines. If their calculator is correct and I give them my 2020 donation/tickets, I will accrue twice as many Priority Points in 2020 alone than the last 5 years combined. That seems a bit on the crazy side.
On the other hand if a large amount of people donate for points...the points are significantly diluted in value.
100% correct. What this also does though is completely screw over future generations of donors. If most people go Option 1/2 and get the x5 bonus points it'll be almost impossible for future donors to overcome the priority points of established donors.
Exactly.
Also burns older hokie club members who don't currently have season tickets.
Why not give the same multiple to ALL contributors this year?
The 2020 part is very interesting to me. If we think we will have home games this year, and if we think there might be a snowball's chance in hell that some attendance is allowed, it seems like the money in this pre-paid account would be used for tickets in this season.
Right?
UNCheat just went all virtual after 1 week of in-person because of multiple outbreaks on campus. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell we have football in the fall.
All I want is two games before the season ends. I would be happy AF if we go 2-0 this year.
Correct. If you get selected to get tickets, the money is already there.
Yea, but the chance of getting single tickets is going to be almost impossible if you're not in the top 2-3,000 of priority points. If they only allow 4,000 people in the stadium you gotta figure that they'll sell out before they get past people ranked 2,000 or higher.
I just logged in to check my priority points and I got the error "You dont have enough Hardee's coupons for 2020 tickets."
Why someone would go to a 4K fans, Covid, no tailgating scenario at Lane is beyond me. Watch on TV. Chances are many players from each team are sitting out with Covid, and they won't necessarily be the back up punter, you have to wear a mask, you can't high 5 your neighbor seats, etc. I couldn't imagine paying extra for that. Even for the Hokies.
I think we are leaning towards crediting our tickets to next year, but letting them keep our donation. Let's face it, IF there is a game, they won't allow tailgating, and if there is no tailgating, I don't want to spend more time in the car traveling to and from the game that I would actually spend at the game itself.
I bought season tickets for the first time this year for the Penn State game. Now that that's never gonna happen, I'm leaning towards refunding the tickets and allowing them to keep the donation. The form to submit your request was annoying though. Requires you to put in a phone number so that they can contact you about how to get your refund, but then there is a checkbox underneath in which you have to consent to receive text messages from them. You can't submit the form without providing a phone number and consenting to the text messages. I'm fine with providing a number so they can contact me about how to get my refund, but I don't want to sign up for unsolicited text messages...
Scratch that, they must have fixed it. I tried when they first sent the email out and you couldn't submit the form without checking the text message box, but just tried again and it was no longer required.
RIP any chance at a buy-out in the next two years.
Buy outs in college football are definitely done for a while. Whoever your coach is currently, you probably have them for the next 2-3 minimum unless they get fired for cause or retire. Not athletic department in the country is going to have the money to even think about coaching changes.
Think positively it is a year off his contract and the buyout is really starting to shrink now.
And then there's Florida State going "Hold my beer!"
Priority points are 100% overrated in the "PSL" era anyway. There are such large swaths of levels that it's near meaningless. The only time it matters is if you want tickets to a "hot" acc tournament- meaning VT is not the 12 seed, playing on Wednesday night, or a top level bowl game not named the Orange. You can walk up the night of the orange bowl and get 40 dollar tickets, unless it's a playoff game. Other than that? 100% meh. The mega donors are at a priority level that 99% of the rest of people won't ever catch, and the difference between level 300 and 400 tickets at the belk bowl is negligible, and they secondary market is huge and cheaper. Once they went to per seat donations in football, priority points rankings became even more irrelevant to MOST members.
I'm tired of jumping let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos
Credited my ticket purchases (3) and donated my contribution. I'm real low on the totem pole being that it's only my second year so priority points aren't a big deal to me. Looks like I'll be spending my saturdays in a tree!
Fuente should take a voluntary pay cut this season.
I have been waiting for that news actually. Realistically if football is canceled, he should be taking at least a 50% pay cut.
I read somewhere (on the unconfirmed internet) that the coaches were donating parts of their salaries to the athletic fund. I have no credible source for that, though.
If I'm Fuente, instead of voluntarily giving money back, I am talking to Whit about a restructured contract. I know people would love (\s) the idea of another extension, but I think it could make sense for both sides as this deficit will be felt for years.
Whit has said every high paid coach and staff member has taken a temporary pay cut that won't be publicly discussed.
From the RIchmond Times Dispatch:
So it really is the right thing to do.
I think this is the proper way to handle it. It had to be done but it really is between Whit and his employees.
Is it really between Whit and his employees? They are all state employees and therefore their salaries are public knowledge. If the Hokie Club is coming out with different incentives to get Hokie Nation to donate more, I don't think it's a lot to ask what our Hokie Staff members are doing to also help out with budget shortages.
While gross wages/salaries would be public information, I don't believe specific employees 'payroll deductions/withholdings would be public information. For instance, it's not public knowledge how much additional income tax withholdings an employee has taken out. I highly doubt they are actually adjusting their gross wages but rather temporarily deducting a certain percentage each pay period. You won't see a specific revenue line on their income statement to reflect retained wages either, this would be simply for damage control on the overall budget deficit.
You bring up a great point, but perception is everything. If Whit is asking me to donate more when I'm not sure if my wife is going to be employed next month because of the pandemic, that would go over better if we knew what sacrifices a few millionaires are making.
800% agreed.