Comments from Barbara Schultze from June 6 Meeting:

I could barely make out anything from the conference call so I'm going to just give some input based on the agenda - I'm sure you're going to send out an email/note about the meeting anyways.

So the point Friends of DAPER is to find ways to raise more funds for all of the athletics that go on, and to create some sort of marketing strategy so that people are more aware of DAPER and the needing of funds. I just want to make sure I am understanding the point.

I think the initial proposed offices and terms are fine. I can't really think of anyone else to include on a steering committee. Terms of membership - I don't think that there should be one specifically, although it would be nice to have each of the sports/and or areas represented at all times. So if someone wants to take a not so active role or what have you, they should be ready to find someone to replace them or until someone comes along. maybe that’s not feasible, I'm not sure. and I think anyone who wants to be part of this is more than welcome.

I'm not web-design-savvy. can't help there.

Enhancing visibility: This has got to be the one HUGE problem across campus that I felt when I was there.  One issue is that people are split on their views of sports in general at MIT.  Varsity versus club versus intramural sports get tricky. MIT went this bizarre route back in the day and 'varistied' a ton of sports (in my opinion not very wisely). Being a division 3 school, the 'quality' of varsity programs tends to wane due to recruiting and not enough backing of the programs. Or just who we get in the school. One year for volleyball we had about 6 people who would have been great for us, and were smart enough, but admissions to MIT aren't guaranteed on anything. The fact that we have intramural sports means that varsity sports are supposed to be the competitive arena for their sports.

Another bitter spot with people is the way that money is put towards athletics from MIT overall, and then how that money is given out in the athletic budget. And what each IM sport really needs, and what varsity sports really need to be competitive. That and that no one supports athletics there unless they are playing. Even then, they're not always super into it (probably would help to have GOOD sports teams....that’s another story).

Finally, b/c of sub par whatever, a lot of athletes can get left with bitter feelings towards their sport, and with recent actions, their school. I would think that there is a pretty strong correlation between greek life people and athletes, both varsity and non, and they don't like MIT much right now. They don't want to give money to the school in general. I've also run into former volleyball players who wouldn't give during the phoneathon b/c of the way the program was run under their coach at the time.

As far as sports having websites, or communicating to their alumni, true, some are better than others. But also, these coaches don't have the time and money to go about doing that, because its not financed a whole lot by the department. Paul Dill (women's and now men's volleyball coach) used to send a newsletter every so often, but even that has sort of fallen apart. We also have tried to have alumni games once a year, but that doesn't always have a great turnout.  After listening to the brief part of the call that I could, I would say we should definitely look at how crew has managed to keep all the alumni involved and excited and giving.

What can we do? Well, I would think at least on my part, I'm not all that great at actually asking people for money - and I hate to do it. I would think our group would have some people who have good fundraising ideas or can go that route and then maybe people who can devise a strategy to find out why people aren't donating, getting all the back data on why we can't get money. I also don't think that many people realize how money flows through athletics in general.

As for relationships with coaches - we need to get ideas from them on who to contact (because not all people who are listed under something by the alumni office played for more than 1 year for various reasons) and what ideas they might have on fundraising and a commitment that their team or reps from their team would help out if we had events.

I think we need to get something maybe in the tech review that goes to alumni. what we're trying to do, highlights on the athletics, etc. For the school, we need to get the student body more aware of athletics in general and I think a big part of that is the news paper. The 'sports' section that is in every Friday issue, to put it bluntly, sucks. It'd be nice to have more school spirit, but I have not idea how to get that up.

Well, I tried writing this twice today so I apologize that my thoughts are probably not organized very well.

Barb