With final location, requirements, and design all seemingly in process, which specific facts support a perspective fundraising is becoming a challenge for UCONN's new arena let alone clearly becoming an across the board challenge?
I wasn't attempting to be critical about what they are doing in the grand scheme of things - just looking at my perceived reality.
I was referencing fundraising for current and future athletic projects - not specifically the arena and this statement by Warde in the same article points to the need to continue to raise funds in order to move things forward: "I'll lump soccer, baseball, softball together. We have designs and cost estimates on what those facilities will cost individually, and development of fundraising plans.
Baseball has $1.5 million in commitment. That project has been on the books for a while. We're looking at how we'll develop that side of the campus.
Soccer is longer down the road with the [$8 million] gift from Tony Rizza. So if anything breaks out first in terms of phases of the project it would be soccer."
They've been talking about baseball facilities improvements for years (have floated plans/designs) and have just come up w/ an interim plan to make the change to field turf after this season, nothing about the stands, or other needed enhancements for a program w/ the success they have had and need to have to compete. If the $$ were already raised/committed it would be moving faster or done already. They have been talking about the challenges to raise funds for a number of years.
I do imagine (but could be off base) that once the design and final cost for the renovation of Freitas come in there will be a need to develop plans to raise additional funds.
Noting UCONN raised the
biggest $ in the school's history during the last few years, built a $40 million hoops facility, generated an $8 million soccer facility donation, reportedly recently obtained a couple pledges for about $10 million, etc., how has fundraising evolved or become a different or bigger challenge? Being stuck on the AAC island doesn't help for sports fundraising, but in general UCONN appears to finally be more proactive and consequently successful in raising funds for the university.
I agree that in general they have improved fundraising by leaps and bounds. They did a great job w/ raising the money for the Werth Family Basketball Champions Center - but there is also a larger source/base of potential donors/supporters for MBB/WBB than for MHOC/WHOC, baseball, softball, etc... Manuel has mentioned previously that these need to be 100% privately funded and that's where I specifically see athletic facility fundraising becoming a challenge moving forward. Even the significant Rizzo donation/pledge is only half of what they need for the soccer facility. As you point out, it has to be harder based on conference affiliation to generate new sources of private donations earmarked specifically for athletics (outside of scholarships).
