The unofficial online home for fans of the Old Dominion University Monarchs. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(03-04-2024 09:08 AM)The Flagship Wrote:  

(02-29-2024 03:56 PM)The Flagship Wrote:  

(02-29-2024 03:31 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  We're outspending them in everything except overhead, debt and spirit groups. Cynically, it may not be a coincidence that those are also the categories that also reduce the student fees in calculating the subsudized amount for Cox bill purposes. If you fatten those categories and thus the overall budget you can reduce the student fees by that amount but it's still divided by the overall budget. The numerator is reduced but not the denominator making it easier to meet.

The amount of contributions reported I don't think necessarily correspond to what ODAF collects, just what they transfer to the dept for current year spending so it's kind of hard to know without getting ODAF's 990 what kind of unrestricted warchest they are sitting on. And thus hard to tell how much can be moved to NIL.

Yes on the ODAF contributions. That just shows what was transferred to cover expenses, not the total incoming amount to ODAF that year. I don't know what the total ODAF warchest is but that is something I can easily find out due to my contacts. But I don't know if ODAF money will be going to NIL. My reference to NIL earlier was that if a donor only has $5000 to give, he/she might decide to give half to NIL and half to ODAF, thus reducing the ODAF donations. That could produce a strain on the warchest.
The large donors will likely still continue with ODAF because of the tax benefits, naming rights, and benefits. NIL will likely have to rely on the smaller donors.

Well, I have the latest "warchest" info and it's more concerning than when I began sounding the alarm on this board several years ago. Our outflow (to fill budget gaps) has been more than our inflow for several years now. Money from donors going to special project fundraising, has reduced money going into the general use fund which is needed for scholarships, coaches salaries, and other budget gaps. Other things like conforming to the Cox Bill and the move to the SBC has also put a strain on the fund. Money from donors going to NIL instead of general use will put additional pressure on the warchest. Without any significant changes soon, we may only have a few years of money left.

My guess is that we will curtail new special projects in the near future and put a major focus on the general use fund. Probably need more and more guarantee games going forward. And if UVA football buys out the trip to Norfolk, it will likely help us financially (buyout vs. increased ticket sales). We have been in a deep grind for a while now and it looks like that will continue for a while. JMU is at the very beginning of this same thing and they are starting in a worse position than we were in.

By the way, speaking of the Cox Bill, remember that when they came up with the 55% number, that was based on a study they did almost 10 years ago. I wonder if they did that same study today, would they find that the number would be higher using the same parameters? A 5% increase would be a significant help.

This is a good idea. Perhaps ODU and JMU could ask for the study to be redone for current times and get the number raised. Now that JMU is part of the equation it'd be much more likely to happen. The other thing to consider is ticket sales. Hopefully Mike Jones will get basketball thriving again and ticket revenue rising. But football is the bigger driver, and right now we are still struggling in that regard. Rhane and the admin have got to get this program back to its winning ways and having and extraordinary game day experience in order to fill that stadium. Thats a lot of potential money going to waste in those empty seats.