Duke Club Adding a Record Number of New Members
A few months ago I was fortunate to get together with some folks from the Duke Club staff for lunch. It was a unique opportunity for me to spend time with some of the only people are earth who don’t roll their eyes at the mere thought of my overly enthusiastic interest in JMU sports. Quite to the contrary, they actually seemed to appreciate it. So it was a fun afternoon. It also was quite informative as they told me all about the Duke Dog Pride campaign they were just getting ready to roll out.
For those that don’t know, the Duke Dog Pride campaign is a plan to add 2,011 new Duke Club members in 2011. It’s an ambitious goal and one that could give JMU a big leg up on some other athletic programs it competes against, like Richmond, Appalachian State, ODU, and Montana. Each of those schools currently have more athletics donors that JMU. I recently caught up with Brian Powell, Assistant Director of the Duke Club, and asked him for an update on the campaign. He provided me with the info below that shows things are going pretty well. Dollars are tracked according to the fiscal year (July 1 – June 30) and member numbers are based on the calendar year.
New Members to date (Jan – present): 836 Previous All-time Record for New Members (2007): 769
Dollars raised to date: $1,403,068
Projected dollars raised: $1.55M+
All-time dollars raised record: $1,303,410
Football Season ticket sales: 6,138
Renewal Rate: 71% to date and expected to finish closer to 80-85%
2010 Season Tickets: 5,128Club Seat Sales: 702 of 1,0000
It’s impressive that just 6 months into the year, they’ve already added more members than in any other year. There still is a ways to go however. If you’ve been thinking about joining the Duke Club, but just haven’t done so yet, now would be a great time to sign up. If you’ve never really thought about joining, I’d encourage you to learn a little bit about it and take the plunge. And if you’re a particularly persuasive person, then hound your friends until they sign up. That stadium ain’t gonna pay for itself. And most importantly if anyone of you are one of the 702 lucky individuals who have purchased club seats, feel free to invite your favorite JMU bloggers to sit with you at the opener.
That season ticket number looks awfully low to me. Is that right? I understand the student and the visiting team’s sections take up a lot of space, but were there really only 5,000 season tickets sold last year? How does the rest of the stadium fill up every week?
That season ticket total looks awful high to me, but I graduated in 1990 and it seemed like we had trouble getting 5000 in total home attendance back during the Purzycki era.
Matt, I thought it seemed kind of low to. If someone would have asked me to guess the number I would have said 7,000 to 8,000. I always figured that the entire non-student side was nothing but season tix holders.
The big reason to join has nothing to do with dollars. We little donors don’t help make up all the money. The big donors are who make that money skyrocket, and they look at one thing. They want to see an alumni base that is active with the school. They look at percentage of alumni who give back. It can be 20 bucks, but you count toward that number. Then the big guys come in with a few extra million. Most think they have to give $500. Not true. Just give something.
Well said Tedward. It’s much easier to get corporate sponsors or wealthy donors to step up to the plate if they know that a significant number of alums contribute. Plus a lot of those little donations add up to some pretty significant numbers.