I posted this on another BC sports board, but I thought it might be of interest to some people here, so I'm sharing. Please feel free to tell me I'm wrong. (And paging Doc to ride in to defend Leahy, which he is completely wrong about from my own first hard experience.) Note that I was responding to someone that was criticizing the "big donors with names on buildings" for not giving to NIL, just to give you the context.
To be honest, I have a problem with the concept of donating for NIL. I'm not one of the naming people you talk about, but I donate decent amounts to BC every year. And if I have to ask myself whether I want to donate part of it to NIL instead, it is hard to justify on the surface. It feels just like paying athletes to play a year at BC. How would you feel if you knew that your donation went mostly to pay Tommy C for half a season after which he stormed off like a petulant child? By the way, I also donate money to a bunch of other charities, but it is an even harder decision to say "do I want to redirect money from a homeless shelter to a BC athlete or two?" Even the guys with those names on the buildings do not have unlimited budgets for donations (at least most of them) and they have to decide between choices and NIL is not always the highest priority. I want BC sports to be good, but NIL is a hard way to get there. This is why BC leadership needs to be out there explaining to BC donors how they would like them to think about NIL donations (why they are good) and telling them actively that they want money to go to NIL (and why). Without that, we are not going to get the big NIL donations. This is fundamentally a Leahy issue because he doesn't believe in the value of *successful* sports to the BC brand and he is a completely crappy fund-raiser. If the next BC President doesn't get behind NIL, you will never see it happen. Just to tell you how bad the situation is, when my donor rep last met with me (late last year), I asked her: "should I be directing part of my donations to NIL?" She froze like a deer in headlights. When she acknowledged that she didn't have an answer to that, I asked: "does BC have a plan to be competitively successful in sports and can you share that with me so I understand that there is a plan for my donation?" Again, deer meet headlights. She is now trying to get a meeting setup with her, me and someone from the athletics office to help address my questions. Note that for the past decade, my donations have gone into the Flynn Fund, so the fact that I am handled by someone that doesn't know how to address my questions is malpractice. But I believe that it starts at the top. My guess is that they put the people in general development rather than sports development because Leahy at some point said "why do we want to hire to raise money for sports rather than the general university". Bottom line, the problem is in leadership and the way BC operates.
To be honest, I have a problem with the concept of donating for NIL. I'm not one of the naming people you talk about, but I donate decent amounts to BC every year. And if I have to ask myself whether I want to donate part of it to NIL instead, it is hard to justify on the surface. It feels just like paying athletes to play a year at BC. How would you feel if you knew that your donation went mostly to pay Tommy C for half a season after which he stormed off like a petulant child? By the way, I also donate money to a bunch of other charities, but it is an even harder decision to say "do I want to redirect money from a homeless shelter to a BC athlete or two?" Even the guys with those names on the buildings do not have unlimited budgets for donations (at least most of them) and they have to decide between choices and NIL is not always the highest priority. I want BC sports to be good, but NIL is a hard way to get there. This is why BC leadership needs to be out there explaining to BC donors how they would like them to think about NIL donations (why they are good) and telling them actively that they want money to go to NIL (and why). Without that, we are not going to get the big NIL donations. This is fundamentally a Leahy issue because he doesn't believe in the value of *successful* sports to the BC brand and he is a completely crappy fund-raiser. If the next BC President doesn't get behind NIL, you will never see it happen. Just to tell you how bad the situation is, when my donor rep last met with me (late last year), I asked her: "should I be directing part of my donations to NIL?" She froze like a deer in headlights. When she acknowledged that she didn't have an answer to that, I asked: "does BC have a plan to be competitively successful in sports and can you share that with me so I understand that there is a plan for my donation?" Again, deer meet headlights. She is now trying to get a meeting setup with her, me and someone from the athletics office to help address my questions. Note that for the past decade, my donations have gone into the Flynn Fund, so the fact that I am handled by someone that doesn't know how to address my questions is malpractice. But I believe that it starts at the top. My guess is that they put the people in general development rather than sports development because Leahy at some point said "why do we want to hire to raise money for sports rather than the general university". Bottom line, the problem is in leadership and the way BC operates.
