Longhorn Foundation: Your Overall Thoughts/Ideas?

I've not noticed if anyone has mentioned the tax deduction
that we get (80% of your donation is deductible). That makes
it less painful, but occasionally someone in congress starts
a rumble about eliminating this deduction for college-related
fundraising. If that ever happens you will see all the
LHF members' names on one page of the program. In large
font. Double spaced.
 
Instead of donating to LHF, I endowed a scholarship at a low level, pay what I would to the LHF, and get outrageous perks that I never received as an LHF member at similar levels.
 
Glad this thread has received some great responses. On the "charity" topic ...

True, Foundation donation is 80% deductible. But, as Hellraiser alluded to, the question is not about the tax deduction, but rather if the money is going to a proper place. Other University-related purposes are equally deductible. In other words, giving a couple of Gs for football priorities is fine. But, as has been described many times, why not just scalp the tickets needed each year, all season if needed. In the end, you can save quite a bit of money, especially if you are a donor of certain levels, and for some, especially the Northerners, Southies, and other Johnny-Come-Lately(s), you probably end up with better seat locations.. If you really like just supporting the athletic department and want to get invited to stuff, then just donate the minimum annual $150 for those purposes. And you are still coming out less out-of-pocket. Here is where the philanthropy comes back in. Take the money you save and perhaps donate it to causes that are more in need, compared to the cash machine that is the athletic department. Donate to your respective college. Donate to an endowed scholarship. Donate to the Texas Exes, either overall or your local chapter (or both). Donate to on campus groups. All of the above need the money, however large or marginal, more than the athletic department.

Not condoning leaving the Foundation, nor condoning continuing to support it. Rather, just wondering what others think when it comes to the subject, and how it relates/affects other aspects of your respective relationship to The University.
 
Do the majority of y'all have membership strictly for football tickets? Or do y'all also have tickets to other sports? What is the (football) parking situation going to do to your plans?
 
I have a feeling there are going to be some pissed off folks when parking gets sent out this week ...
 
To answer you last question - I use my LHF membership for retaining my tickets. My parking pass has never been hugely important to me (as I have always been way out for parking). Mostly I give my parking passes to friends for easier parking for them.

However, this year I did donate more, as I want to look into getting basketball tickets (and maybe baseball too). I might also considering other upgrades (club access, etc), though again, these are not a huge priority.
 
count me in the crowd that this will be the last year I donate to the foundation.

This parking thing has become such a ******* clusterfuck that it just piles on with all the issues I have had with Belmont over the years.

In 1999, myself, Hellraiser97 and 2 others bought 4 tickets together. We each had donated to the foundation (I had just bumped my donation from $150 to $350), and sent in the 1999 ticket renewal/purchase in the same envelope for all 4 of us.

We also had a letter in that envelope stating that we wanted all of our tickets to be together(with whoever donated at the lowest being our priority level), and on top of that, the applications were STAPLED together.

Come August 1999, we get our tickets AND EACH OF US IS SITTING IN AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SECTION!!!!!!!

The LHF tells us "oops we forgot to put you all together" - NO **** SHERLOCK! Their solution? Well our previous tickets had already been given away, and all that were left were Sec 102 Row 28 tickets, so they gave us the much worse seats, and then to top it off, I was told that since I got the new seats with a $350 donation that my new donation level had been raised!

And I have been butt ****** ever since. My minimum is $350, for seats that, while aren't bad, they sure as **** arent the lower level 20 yard line seats we had before the LHF ****** us, and if I want to keep these season tickets, I need to donate $350 from now on, (I donated about 3 times that this year).

So like the others on the board, with the cost of OU going through the roof, and the upcoming seasons having horrid opponents (meaning cheaper scalped tickets), I am really thinking about just dropping my season tickets entirely, and saving my money to give to the school.

Oh and for those who are wondering about the donation, Yes, 80% is deductible, but in a $1000 donation, that means you only get a $800 tax credit, which only amounts to $248 dollars extra at tax time if you are at the 31% tax bracket.

If you dont donate, but buy 2 OU tickets for $300 each you still come out about $150 ahead of where you would have been without donating. And nevermind the fact that you could probably pick up the bad game tickets for face or less with much, much better seats.
 
I'm in the same boat with Hellraiser and KCHorn. I currently sit on the lower level 20 yard line. Great seats, great site lines. Close to my tailgate. I started donating in 2003. But my donation is $1500+ and there are people all throughout my section who give $150 minimums and for some no donation just grandfathered.

I feel like I bought yahoo at $120 while they did at $20. So yeah, to at least rationalize donating this much, I say well I get amazing parking and OU tickets. But now my great parking is going the way of the dodo bird and now I just get OU tickets and my seats. I just don't know if it is worth it.

As KC said, I can pool what I spent on season tix + LF donation and from this pool hell I could pay for OU tix and all the big home games. You can basically get in for free for the crappy games. I had about 6 extra Sam Houston State tickets that friends gave me "in case" I could sell them or at least give them away. I couldn't even give those away.

And since Dodds and Mack Brown refuse to put a great non-conference opponent on the schedule, then this makes it even smarter. Hell one reason to get season tickets is so that when teams like Ohio State come and tickets get scalped for $500-1000, then you don't need to worry about it because you have your tickets at face. But over the next 10 years, we have what UCLA and Arkansas as our headliners? Ok.

I told my wife that I would consider doing this but she can't complain if I have to spend say $300 for a Nebraska ticket in 2 years. She said that she would be fine with that because net-net it is still cheaper.

In some regards, this might be a blessing for many of us.

As for the LF, the sad thing is that when we do go 4-8, the bottom is going to fall out because the band wagon guys will jump off and some people will be so pissed off from the previous regime that they won't get season tickets again.
 
Ok, I have to admit, I wish I read this whole thread before I got in, but now that I have, I feel that I can truly contribute fully.

First off the main thread started w/ the questions why do I donate to the LHF. That is a very simple thing - football tickets. I donate specifically so I can keep my tickets at my grandfathered priority. I got in for the minimum ($150) in 1999 and ended up in section 8 lower end. Not bad seats, slight sight line problems to the SW corner of the field, but I am pretty happy w/ what I have, considering I have 7 season tickets for the minimum (basically +$5 per game per seat).

Now, the question is, if the perks started to be priced out for me or if tickets were not a factor, would I still donate? Two part question - w/ two answers. Part 1 - perks - I hardly make use of these at all, mainly due to the fact that I have never been in line for anything good. The minimum has gotten my season tickets, but OU, parking, etc, I have always been bottom of the barrel. If tickets were not a factor, then I wouldn't donate. The tickets alone are a pretty good way to support the athletic department. Heck, the $2k+ I spent on tickets makes my minimum donation look pretty small anyway. Which helps more?

My main problem w/ the system now is that it seems to all be driven by the almighty dollar. I mean, I got in at just the right time in my section. But to get my seats now, you have to donate, what? $2k? It certainly isn't fair to the new ticket holders that pay 10x my LHF fees for the same seats because I got in 6 years earlier (pretty much what Fied is saying). At the same time, I have no chance of ever hoping to move up, baring trying to increase my donate, and even then it is purely a guess what could get me better.

Because of this, I really see no incentive to give more money. I know that to get OU tickets I am looking at well over $1k of donation. But that is just one perk. What would it really take for me to realize an upgrade in seats? Especially when now, my seats would require such a large initial donation. Since I am grandfathered in for my tickets, there is no incentive for me to donate more. The only down side is that if I fail to donate more, I could get screwed in this construction and end up w/ worse seats than I have had the past few years.
 
Ignatius, I haven't missed a home game since 1993. Including the entire UCLA game in 1997. I am not a johnny come lately. But yet I feel so used by the LF that I am willing to say screw you I'll buy my tix elsewhere. My point is if they didn't treat me like toilet paper, I would be around at the stadium until the Eyes even at 4-8.

But que sera, sera.
 
In the long run, while many of us struggle with impact of bandwagon growth and higher donors pricing us out of good parking, OU and bowl tickets, and worse at any possibility of improving our seats for what feels like forever... it is important to appreciate what the new stadium is going to do for us all. Try to finance hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into a facility that gets used five or six times annually and you'll never reach a rate or return that would support the NEZ or the future SEZ additions.

These are some pretty serious growing pains but at least the LHF and other athletic revenues can support the facilities upgrade.

In the meantime I'll lower my donation to just enough to keep my football and basketball priority seating and pay market prices for good OU and other tickets.
 
The current state of the LHF is based on the current success of the football team. Were the football team to experience a 10 year stretch...even a 5 year stretch like it did in the mid 80s to mid 90s would put a pretty good dent in demand for tickets, which at the same time are not in greater supply and you would see a nice correction in the way they do things.

Not that I really want it to come to that...
 
By the way the Foundation messed up the parking - it needs to be more transparent so that people had a chance to stay in their current lots.

It is kind of like being pushed out of your seats for giving the same donation level
 
If I'm not going to get parking within hailing distance of the stadium or OU tickets for $1,300 per year after 10 years at that level, then **** the people in front of me who pay nothing. It's a new day, isn't it? At least after getting ****** out of parking and getting ****** out of what has become the only good game on our schedule, I should at least get better seats...
 
The parking is the first step. Reseating will likely happen within a decade. The expansion in the North EZ will forestall this... for awhile. The problem the LHF is experiencing is due to prolonged success. There are now ppl who have been donating pretty substantial $ (enough for OU tickets) for ten years that are still sitting in worse seats than tons of folks who occupy the best seats in the stadium for little or no donation. Fied is right, these are not johnny-come-latelys, but they are getting tired of spending thousands of dollars to sit in inferior seats for decades just because they graduated in the late 90s as opposed to the 80s. The North EZ commands $750 a seat for chairbacks, or $1,500 donation for a pair. That's the freaking end zone?!?

This debate has gone on for a long time, but it has always revloved around new donors coming in and displacing old donors. What you are starting to see is frustration from relatively long-time donors (5+ years), who just can't seem to get ahead in the stadium and now they are getting their preferred parking taken away and herded into State Garage R.

LHF is in danger of losing the mid-range donors ($750-$2,500), who I dare say provide a huge chunk of the revenue. For the most part, these folks do not have the best seats - those either go to grandfathered ticket holders for no donation or big ticket donors who donated enough to pounce on someone's seats that died. Plenty of these ppl are in the west side upper deck. In order to get out, the only real option is to jump on the new north end tickets, which are fairly high for end zone seating. Now they are losing their tailgate lots and banished to garages. At some point you reach a tipping point, and perhaps this is it.

Since so many want to tailgate, they will have to forego their LHF parking and pay to park at a state surface lot. As mentioned ad nauseum, it really is probably cheaper to just scalp tickets to the games than to pay the donation and buy the tickets. If the mid-level donor keeps getting screwed, they will be well served to just drop their donation, as there is no hope of real seat improvement due to the grandfather clause.
 
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the idea that there are people that wait years for the opportunity to buy a ****** ticket in Nebraska.

I am very frustrated by being stuck where I am with others not donating anything, I too hope they fix that. But I do have seats and bad parking and I'll do the best with what I've got and I'm very happy to be able to attend the games.
 
Blym, are these guys also donating say $2000 or just short of that? Per year? I have a hard time believing that.

A buddy of mine is a huge Steelers fans and season tix don't come up. Huge waiting list. But no donation required. If anything 1 time "seat option" and not one you have to reup every year.
 
How much of this has to do with scalpers?

$3000=20 donations of $150=80 tickets.

Small price to pay to re-sell them at anywhere from 3-10 times face value wouldn't you say?

Policing that on the otherhand would be hard to do...but I'm just saying...
 
Correct, the real problem is that they have a donation system in place here that does not work. The old-timers need to be forced into reasonable minimum donations for the better seats or get moved to teh endzone.

I really don't know much about Nebraska except that new tickets were hard to get according to an alum I knew in Colorado. They have a system like ours except they they note that donation level only counts if tickets are available. I found a few other things on the net:

In reply to:
Click to expand...
 
Called to find out where my parking is for my minimal donation. First feared I would be bumped to at least San Marcos but I will be in the purple "first come first served" garages.

I asked about parking for next year and they said they were working on a plan to offer prime tailgating spots (I'm guessing lots 70, 80, 99) at an additional charge. They are hoping to send out notification options for the new parking structure some time in December.
 
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