The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/592698
24 ■ THE WOLFPACKER You don't have to be an alum. Some of our largest donors are not State alums and just love the Wolfpack. Every donor matters to us. Those at the very minimal level are important to us. We recognize that a lot of donors are giving all that they can afford to give and are giving a greater percentage of their income than often times a much larger donor is. Being a part of the Wolfpack Club is what matters, so we called it "Membership Matters." All ages and all giving levels are welcomed here. I really feel like that we probably know our members as well as anybody in the country. We don't judge our members by what they give, and we try to treat them all with respect. We know our donors give us all they can afford to give us. Our strength is in our numbers. That's a Wolfpack anyway: strength in numbers. In the last two years, two additional costs have been added to the student-athlete scholarship bill as a result of NCAA rulings — cost-of-attendance and meal legislation. How has that impacted the Wolfpack Club? It's impacted our goals significantly. There was not a lot of advance time to prepare for either of the two new legisla- tive actions, but they were both very im- portant. The first was the meal legislation, which allows for unlimited meals for our student-athletes. The last was the cost of at- tendance. The meal legislation was put into place last year, and the cost of attendance was put into place this year. From the 2013-14 year to the 2015-16 year, the scholarship bill has gone up about $2.8 million. It's now right at $12 million a year. It's been a pretty significant increase in a short period of time, about 31 percent, but our donors have risen to the occasion. We still have a long way to go, and we'll get better control of it on an annual basis. Along with those, just the normal cost of going to school keeps increasing. Tuition continues to rise each year. Everything else: books, rooms, those things continue to rise as well. In all the years I've worked here, I've never seen the tuition go down. It is always going to go up. It's a challenge, but we can meet the challenge if we can get more people to join the Wolfpack Club. We encourage every member to find a new member. If everybody finds a new member, we'd be able to tackle these challenges without any problems. With those increases, what is the Wolf- pack Club doing to meet these challenges? We started the Legacy Fund and asked people who had already given what they normally give to give an additional $240. We used the number 24 because we had so many great athletes wear 24. We took that number and made it $240 and asked our donors to give. We had 1,153 donors give to the Legacy Fund, and that totaled over $400,000 in ad- ditional money. Some of them gave more than $240. That was the minimum to be part of the Legacy Fund. About 20 percent of our members went up 18 percent. We had about four percent go up to the next giving level. The Legacy Fund will continue this year. We are just trying to find as many ways as we can to produce more income to be able to pay this scholarship bill that contin- ues to increase. We certainly appreciate what anybody can give. Any amount of increase makes a big difference. People that can't increase, we understand that. If they can just go find a new member, just one new member, it would help us tremendously. The infographic above details the rising costs associated with funding scholarships for NC State's 23 varsity sports and more than 500 student-athletes. IMAGE COURTESY THE WOLFPACK CLUB