Mizzou athletic department to change donor points system

Significant changes are coming to Tiger Scholarship Fund as Missouri aims to remain financially competitive in the Southeastern Conference.

As an athletic department, MU ranks 13th among 14 SEC schools in private giving, which helps pay for scholarships, travel costs and facility improvements among other considerations.

Missouri raised $22 million in private donations during the 2013-14 fiscal year, which ranked ahead of only Vanderbilt, but the Tigers’ athletic department hopes a new donor level-first model for private giving will help move MU closer to the middle of the pack.

“We’re going to hear that it’s all about money and I don’t want to come across too strong here, but it is,” Missouri associate athletic director for advancement Tim Stedman said. “Our competitors are not apologizing for that and our competitors are more aggressive in how they’re going about securing funding. We need to do that, too.”

Under the old Priority Points system, MU boosters had separate point totals for football and another for men’s basketball and only earned points based on gifts made for seat premiums and parking.

That will no longer be the case as the Tigers’ athletic department transitions July 1 to the donor level-first model, which will deemphasize points and combine the football and men’s basketball tallies into one concise donor rank.

Under the new system, a donor’s total annual contribution to Missouri athletics — including gifts for suites and club seating, facility projects, endowments, sport-specific gifts and, for the first time, donations to the Total Person Program — will determine a booster’s donor annual level.

Points will only be used to determine the order within the 13 donor levels, including six created for the new — Rock M ($100-249), True Tiger ($7,500-9,999), Excellence ($15,000-24,999), All-American ($25,000-49,999), Hall of Fame ($50,000-99,999) and Flagship ($100,000+)

For example, a donor who has given $500 per year to the Tiger Scholarship Fund won’t lose any points he or she has accumulated, but a donor willing to give $1,000 per year can leapfrog that person based on donor rank by buying into a higher donor level. Missouri hopes new donors will take advantage of the chance to buy in and that existing donors who seek greater benefits will consider bumping up donor levels.

Every dollar given to Missouri athletics will help determine a donor level, which locks May 31 each year, and will be used to determine rank for parking passes, new and additional season-ticket requests and tickets requests for away, neutral site and postseason games.

Tigers supporters still will receive points for every $100 in gifts, consecutive years of season-ticket membership and consecutive years of stewardship to the Tiger Scholarship Fund. There also will be a one-time bonus point award for season-ticket members in conjunction with the revised system.

“One of the things that we like about this model is that we’re terming it an opportunity,” Stedman said. “If you want to stay at the donor level that you’re at right now, you can do that, keep your seats and there’s no increase in your seat premium. But if you want to increase your investment and be rewarded commensurate with that, now you have an opportunity to do that.”

MU will not reallocate seats or raise seat premiums on current season-ticket members for now, but parking will be reallocated completely based on the new system.

“We didn’t want to impact everybody,” Stedman said. “We could have, as most programs do, conducted a seat reallocation reseating plan. Again, that would have affected everybody. … This model is a balance of rewarding loyalties and generating the resource necessary to compete at the highest level.”

Missouri hopes donors who desire better parking and better access to tickets will consider bumping up to a higher donor level. It also hopes that gifts to capital campaigns for projects like the new softball stadium or the proposed south end zone complex will increase. With the additional revenue, MU believes it can close the gap with or even vault ahead of Kentucky, Mississippi, Mississippi State and Arkansas in terms of private gifts.

“Ideally, you want to be in the same realm as South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia as that next stack of SEC schools that are name-brand, national-level schools,” said Derek Steinbach, assistant director of development for the Tiger Scholarship Fund.

Under the old points-only system, donors had no way to gauge their standings relative to other donors. They knew that a $1,000 donation earned 10 priority points, but there was no way to know how much of an impact that had on their donor rank, Stedman said. Now, all donors will be able to visit the redesigned Tigers Scholarship Fund website, which launched Monday, and use the Donor Rank Calculator to see how a contribution will impact their standing in real time.

Missouri used to work around flaws in the old system by making special arrangements for parking or tickets with donors wishing to give a sizable lump sum. That won’t be necessary under the new system, Stedman said.

“When you’ve got deals that are out there, there’s no equity,” Stedman said. “Now, everybody will be treated the same based on the model, so it will be more fair and more equitable and more transparent.”

Among SEC athletic department, Missouri is the seventh to use a donor level-first model, joining Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

Missouri — which claims nearly 9,000 donors, an increase from 6,100 in the final year in the Big 12 — is trying to strike while the football team is hot. Football is a driver for athletic departments across the country and the Tigers have won back-to-back SEC East titles, winning a program record 23 games during the last two seasons.

“We need to generate more money to prepare champions for life,” Stedman said.

MU has scheduled four town halls meetings to address donor questions and concerns, including one 6 p.m. June 9 at the Four Points by Sheraton Kansas City Sports Complex, 4011 Blue Ridge Cutoff.

The other town meetings are Thursday at Mizzou Arena’s Clinton Club, June 10 at the St. Louis Marriott West and June 11 at the University Plaza Hotel in Springfield. Each meeting starts at 6 p.m.

This story was originally published June 1, 2015 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Mizzou athletic department to change donor points system."