Fundraising and Recruiting in Sports: Parralel Worlds?

In order to win you need talent.  To get that talent you have to recruit it.  This is no great secret among college programs as this has always been the case.  What is also very important is having the necessary funds to run a program.  Without these funds, a program cannot be successful.  For this reason, the majority of coaches and athletic departments must fundraise.  And interestingly enough, the practices used in raising funds are quite often similar to the ones used in recruiting.

In both recruiting and in fundraising, coaches must be able to successfully identify prospects.  With recruiting, the coaches attempt to identify the players who have talent and who can help their teams.  In the way of fundraising, coaches try to find donors who have the means to help their programs.  This ability on the part of coaches to recognize prospects goes a long way in determining the success of their programs...in recruiting AND in fundraising.

Persistence is a key to any successful recruitment of a player.  It is not often that a player is going to sign away 4 years of his life to a coach the first time the two come into contact.  It normally takes many phone calls, letters, in person visits, and a level of comfort to get a player to commit to a program.  The same holds true with fundraising.  A potential donor is not just going to write a check when when first contacted.  A donor must feel comfortable with the coach and the idea of where the money will be going.

Recruiting and Fundraising are both areas where the end goal is a commitment.  In recruiting a coach is looking for a verbal, and subsequently, a written commitment.  Fundraising is an arena where the coach wants to secure a verbal commitment from a donor followed by the donation itself.
I can draw comparisons between my experience with fundraising and the process during which I was recruited by colleges for basketball. I work in the field of school fundraising.  In fact, my dad and I worked for QSP, which is one of the companies advertised in the article.  My dad was able to earn National Sales Rep of the Year for QSP in 2005, while I was working full-time with him to help him in his accounts and selling new programs.  My dad and I then incorporated in 2005, which enabled us to offer new products in addition to the QSP ones that we were already using.  What these new products have allowed for us to do is work with a number of high school teams.  Through these sales, I have been able to observe what a profound effect a coach can have on a team's fundraiser.  When a coach persists in motivating players, letting them know how they will benefit from the funds, and acts enthusiastic about the fundraiser, this usually translates into very successful sales.  When a coach treats a fundraiser as though it is a necessary evil, the sale usually flops  because the players will not rally around something that the coach does not rally around.

When I was being recruited for basketball during my senior year of high school, my final list of schools I was considering consisted of those where the coach was enthusiastic about the process.  The programs that I gravitated towards were all ones where the coaches persisted in calling me a lot, showed up at my games to watch me play, and made me feel as though my coming to those schools was very important to them and that i could help those programs a lot.

In all of my experiences, it is the coaches who show the most passion for both recruiting and fundraising that are successful.  If a coach is able to do this, the skills will transfer...as they are very much the same!