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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses 
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses
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10 years 2 months
# | Justin Fuente Reflects on His First Spring in Blacksburg Trying to Fill Beamer-Sized Shoes Nah, that's a vocal minority. I trust Whit has a system in place that will lead to more contributions. As many have said, a large part of the problem was the customer service of the Hokie Club.
Look at it this way, we have a lot of room for improvement in fundraising.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses 
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses Yet schools with lower starting and average salary ranges have higher total giving, more givers and higher average giving than Tech.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses I agree, Chris. Seems like it had to happen.
I also agree it's become a bit of an arms race. The numbers are getting so big.
You wonder how long it will continue to rise.
Or backup punters and long-snappers. Real issues, man. Real issues.
....what am I missing?
TKP, where arguments about uniforms have equal passion to those concerning politics and religion. Still not quite the same level as pie/cake, though.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses I realize this is the nature of the beast these days, but I wonder sometimes when the college football bubble is going to burst. The sport has become an absolute arms race. Schools who have the alumni and donor bases are flooding their programs with money to hire the best coaches, recruit the best players, build the best facilities, etc. etc. Pretty soon (and probably way sooner-than-later) someone is going to build an indoor facility bigger and better than ours, so we will have to compensate and invest in something new and attractive. Cost of tuition keeps going up with no end in sight, so these scholarships will get more expensive. Pretty soon you're going to have people giving absolutely absurd amounts of money for college football tickets, and we already have seen the effects that television has had on football attendance around the country. At what point are people going to say "enough is enough"?
In my opinion, Virginia Tech, at it's foundation, is a very blue-collar work ethic school. A lot of older alumni came from very modest means and worked hard for a good education and career. Juxtapose that with other schools' alumni bases (UVa) where a large portion come from very wealthy families and are used to having tons of discretionary income to throw around for entertainment. Not to say there aren't exceptions, but I think we really need to understand that we aren't historically a blueblood university with tons of big money backing us.
Again, I'm not complaining. I recognize that this is the reality of the sport today. I will continue to support VT Athletics. But big picture, I seriously worry about the direction this is headed.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses While I understand that there's some valid concern about upsetting long-time donors, I think most are missing the point of the overhaul. I could be off base here, but I think it's a call to action and the real goal here is to establish a younger donor base.
For various reasons, I have not yet joined the Hokie Club. I was single, paying student loans and barely scraping by, and have no real reason to buy season tickets because I'm not going to be able to make most games. I've since gotten married and had a stable job for a few years now, but still found no reason to join the Hokie Club. But seeing all the info about where VT stands in the pecking order, it's made me think, "You know what, we can probably spare a few hundred dollars even if we never make it to a game."
I think that's the real issue at hand here - they're starting to target more people like me, who never had any real incentive to donate. Even if I don't buy season tickets now, I'll be accruing points if I want to do so later. Lastly - I'm sure Whit has done his homework, but I'd be willing to be that most people who care about having good seats on gameday will continue to do so.
TEEMING WITH INTEL
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses Y'all need to realize that this needed to happen. To win like a top program the alumni/fans have to give like a top program. We were in the extreme minority in P5 before adopting the per seat donations, and the rest of our system was antiquated and in desperate need of change. There may be growing pains, but changes like this had to be made lest we keep falling behind.
#Hokies AD Whit Babcock said Virginia Tech was in extreme minority of Power 5 schools prior to new per-seat donation plan.— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) May 2, 2016
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses i actually read somewhere that penn state had a very similar problem to this about 4-6 years ago:
they instituted a seat surcharge/premium fee and not long after they got hit with the ncaa punishments, so the team wasn't very good, so people were paying for 1.5-2x the price for a product that was the same or worse. People ended up just going to the edges of the stadium leaving large holes around the middle of the stands.
i just started at the hokie club level and have no idea if im going to be getting season tickets anytime soon. i agree the better move is to get more people to pay, not ask for the few that are paying to pay more
I have opinions on uniforms. You probably don't agree.
Let's talk about politics instead. Or music.
🥁STICK IT IN🥁
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses It seems like a lot of us are looking internally and seeing how the change affects ourselves (which is perfectly reasonable - there is a chance my seat's donation requirement may triple my contribution), but everyone also needs to see things externally. Virginia Tech was being left behind and the truth of the matter is if we want to holler about being a top tier athletics program, we will need to pony up like top tier athletics programs.
Yes, it is circular logic where performance and draw are intertwined, but we can either spiral downward or we can start taking steps upward.
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10 years 2 months
# | Justin Fuente Reflects on His First Spring in Blacksburg Trying to Fill Beamer-Sized Shoes The magic ten wins every year could be a pipe dream
I'll be happy to never hit our 8 year streak again if we show up in big games more often.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses Just to put things into perspective, we have had George Mason B-ball tickets for 30+ years and they went to this system 15 years ago. Very good point.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses Very true and you would hope that never becomes a problem.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses bodies in the seats, not $'s in the coffer
The issue is VT has not had either one in recent years.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses I see what they are trying to accomplish here, but I am not so sure they going about it correctly. Too many people (in their definition) are recieving benefits that are no longer donating and these are high $ seats. I have been a Golden Hokies for the past 7 years and have donated much longer than that and I have always wondered why my seats never seem to get better, now I know. It is a slippery slope they are walking on because in the end they just might piss off a lot of people, similar to what they did around the 2001, you know after we went to NCG. It will take time to work out the kinks, I just hope they don't do too much damage because to me the most important thing is bodies in the seats, not $'s in the coffer. Remember it's about balance and fairness.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses Right, but my issue is: why would someone want to triple-quadruple their donation to keep their current seats when they know they can continue their current donation and move back to a lower level? Just worried about a gigantic hole in the middle 50-yard line for those who don't want to up their contribution to keep the same seats.
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10 years 2 months
# | ODU to Host Penn State, Maryland and Michigan in June; Coach Wilder Said He Would Call Coaches Fuente and Mendenhall to Attend Or did he want a camp with: ODU, LOLUVA and the good guys? Or two camps one for VT and another one for LOLUVA.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses There are still seat sections where the seat donation is zero.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses It does count and counts a lot. Hokie Points are now cumulative instead of resetting every year.
Exhibit A on how to know if your fan base is or is not willing to accept change.
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10 years 2 months
# | Virginia Tech Overhauls Hokie Club to Boost Donations, Meet Growing Scholarship Expenses Yep. If season ticket demand was completely through the roof, this plan makes sense. But we don't sell out our season tickets to HC members and have gobs left over for the general public. Plus, couple this change coinciding with our enthralling home OOC schedule of Delaware and ODU next year, and you may have some seriously unhappy long-time donors.
those seats would be available to those without the lifetime points but currently have the cash, correct?