Everybody knows that college sports are serious business. Students devote many hours to practice and conditioning each week, as well as traveling to away games and tournaments. But not everyone knows about the crucial role of fundraising in college sports.
Because of Hillsdale’s small size and its status as a private university, its teams must make a commitment to fundraising every year.
“We’re always coming up with new ideas,” said Chris Gravel, Hillsdale’s women’s volleyball coach. “Men’s basketball does a reverse raffle. They kind of do one huge fundraiser, whereas we do a bunch of smaller ones all year.”
A recent “smaller” fundraising project for the volleyball team was one they did this summer, for the renovation of the George Roche Sports Complex. The revamp included replacing the gym’s old hardwood floor.
“Everybody wanted to do something to sell the floor,” Gravel said.
So, he and his team set about the task of pulling up its boards, one by one. It was tedious work, but the team made a substantial profit. They had the floor made into “Charger Time” clocks and marketed them as “a piece of history.”
While Gravel and his head assistant coach are mostly responsible for the fundraising ideas, the players must devote a specified amount of time to fundraising activities, including running concessions at home basketball games and hosting a golf outing every summer. The women are also given the names of businesses they must reach out to for sponsorship.
“It’s an ongoing process,” Gravel said. “It’s made to help cover budgets and hopefully, once every four years, do something extra.”
That something extra in 2013 was a tour to Austria and Italy. The team had all of the trip’s costs covered one month prior to departure. While abroad, the Chargers played four professional volleyball teams and went 3-1.
“The team that we lost to was an all-star team, and they were really good,” Gravel said.
The volleyball team has its own plan for yearly fundraising, as does each Hillsdale College sports team. The swimming coach hosts kids’ swim nights. The baseball team does the parking at football games and big track events.
An interview with Laura Klutsarits, women’s softball coach at nearby Siena Heights University, a Catholic institution comparable to Hillsdale in size, revealed similar fundraising strategies. Klutsarits’ assistant coach worked at Hillsdale College for one year and learned about the men’s basketball reverse raffle here. Now, Siena’s annual reverse raffle is the softball team’s biggest fundraiser, bringing in about $15,000.
Fundraising is something Siena coaches tell their players about before they even start school there.
“You have to have buy-in from all of your players,” Kutsarits said. “The reverse raffle is something we talk about through the recruiting process so that students who are coming here know that this is something they’re going to have to do. We require x amount of tickets per student, and they’re responsible for that. Whether they’re buying them themselves or whether they’re selling them is totally up to them.”
Several of Siena’s sports teams work concession stands for NASCAR races at Michigan International Speedway. The teams send between 70 and 80 students there during weekends of NASCAR’s summer season.
“Fundraising is such a vital part of being on a sports team,” Charger sophomore and swimmer Hannah Leitner said. “It’s kind of our way of giving back.”
