One month after being named President and CEO of Seminole Boosters Inc., Stephen Ponder sat down with Warchant.com late last week for a wide-ranging interview.
Ponder, who previously served as executive vice-president of Seminole Boosters, has a wealth of collegiate experience dating back more than three decades. An N.C. State graduate, he earned his master's degree in sports administration at Georgia Southern and has worked for the Wolfpack, Ole Miss, Arizona State and in the private sector.
The bulk of Ponder's career, 16 years, was spent at his alma mater. He was tabbed for his new position following a nationwide search.
This is Part One of our interview and it focuses on Ponder's background, his philosophies on fundraising, FSU's priorities for the athletics department, and challenges caused by the changing landscape of college athletics -- including Name, Image and Likeness, conference expansion and other issues.
Part Two will take a closer look at progress with the Seminoles' planned standalone football facility, the alignment between the athletics department and the fundraising organization, opportunities with FSU Baseball improvements and more.
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Q: You obviously have a strong background in fundraising and development from your years at other institutions. Does the approach have to be different at different schools? Did it take any time to learn the nuances of fundraising here compared to where you've been in the past?
A: I think fundraising is like sports. Not to put everything in a football mentality or basketball, but there are fundamentals that transcend. Then there is the idea that you've got to learn the team you are playing against. And you've got to learn the style. And I think with fundraising, quite frankly, style matters in the region of the country.
The fundamentals are the same. People want to be noticed. They want you to know their name, they want you to remember them when you talk to them -- know things beyond just giving me money. One of the things I talk to our staff about is trying to talk to people as much as you can without asking for money. Then when you do, they don’t say, "My gosh, the only time they care about me is when it’s about money."
But back to your question, I would tell you Arizona State is a different place than Ole Miss was. And N.C. State is different than Tallahassee. Now, this region, North Carolina to Florida, is very similar. But the style can be different. ... I think ultimately, fundraising is very similar in the basics. But the region you are in, it does change a little bit.
Q: So how did you get into fundraising?
A: I interviewed for one job in college, with the James River Corporation. I remember the interview. And I just sat there like, "I don’t really want to do this." No offense to the company, I just didn’t want to do that. So I called the Orange Bowl. Steve Hatchell was the executive director. He’s now the president of the College Football Hall of Fame. And I called him and I got him on the phone, and I was like, "Look, I am not asking for a job today. But if I wanted to get a job with you, what would I have to do?" And he said go to grad school. He named three places. I ended up at Georgia Southern, and I got a job there to run the residence hall so I could be able to afford to go to grad school.
After I finished, I applied for about 10 different jobs as a G.A. to do an internship. Most of the people I talked to thought I was trying to get into coaching. This is 1990, and I went back to N.C. State. That was not my intention, but I went back to work for Bobby Purcell (with the Wolfpack Club). He offered me a job ... I did everything from ticket sales, selling ads in the back of the [booster] magazines. He just called me one day in November of 1991 and said, "Do you want ...," and I was like, "Yes!" It didn’t matter what it was.
My first visit in fundraising was in November 1991. I went to Asheville and visited with a gentleman, and he started asking me things about money that I had no concept of. And I said, "If I could get back to you on that. That’s out of my depth for right now." But that’s how I got into it. I knew I loved being around people. I did like sports. But I didn’t want to coach. So It was a great fit for me.
Q: I'm guessing they didn't start you out with the biggest donors.
A: No, but that’s funny because the gentleman I did meet with that first time ended being one of the wealthiest donors that we had, and nobody knew it. And so when I had breakfast with him that morning and realized it, I was like, "OK! This is not where I wanted to start."
But going back to your earlier question, N.C. State's fundraising model system at the time -- and Clemson had the same type of model at the time, which was a volunteer-based system -- so as a fundraiser, we spent a lot of time with volunteers that were connecting us with people. And it was a great way to learn for me. Because the runway of asking for money was softened a little bit because the volunteer would help. So it was a great learning ground on fundraising for me. And I learned a lot about volunteer management because that’s a full-time job. We had, at that point, probably 400 people in that space.
Q: I would guess, then, that Florida State is seen as more of a professional model because you have so many full-time reps who work directly with donors? I know there have been some grass-roots efforts as well, where Seminole Boosters has asked donors to reach out to their friends, etc.
A: I think the model is different, because the world changes. And I think back to what we were talking earlier about newspapers (before the interview) -- the way people got information. The Internet didn’t exist, so people were looking for scoop and information. And a volunteer network allowed us to be able to talk to volunteers to say, "Hey, talk to your people, give them the scoop (about the teams) and get them energized and get others involved." So 25 years ago, that was a model that really, really worked.
But with the advance of social media and information, the volunteer network loses its luster. Because by the time the information gets there, people already know it. So today, we don’t have a formal volunteer program, because people are busy. But at the same time, we do want everyone who is involved to be an advocate. Because the strongest way for us to grow is peer to peer.
We can send out emails and we can do that, and Derril (Beech, Seminole Boosters senior vice president of marketing) does a great job of that. The more we can get people to activate and ask their friends: "Hey, why don’t you join and you join?" We’re at 12,000 (boosters) right now. And if everyone got one more, we’re at 24 tomorrow. It's obviously harder than that, but that’s the concept.
Q: I know when Michael Alford was in your position, the number of donors to the annual fund had fallen below 10,000 and he made it an immediate goal to get back to at least 13,000. What is the ultimate goal there? Or is there one?
A: We want to get to 25,000 donors. That’s not going to happen overnight, but ...
Q: Because that's what a school like Florida State should have?
A: Because it's what we can have. What we should have -- there are 370,000 alums, and the national average of what people who give back to the alumni association or athletics, if you do the math on that -- we can be bigger than 25. But for our needs, where we are, we want to have as many people involved as possible. Connected.
It's easy for us to say, "Get 25,000 people." But for 25,000 people to be communicated with, and feel like they are making a difference ... because when people hear about large gifts, they say, "Well, my $100 doesn’t matter." But the fact is, every $100 gift and every $100 donor matters. Because of the networks that they have, coming to a game, it all matters. So, we want 25,000 to increase the number of people we’re talking to. And it takes that to compete. ...
And look, we want people to join the annual fund, and we have options for how they can do it. That is the backbone, that’s how we operate. People ask questions about the annual fund all the time. The gifts associated with buying a football ticket or a basketball ticket -- if somebody makes that donation, that is the annual fund. But if somebody lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., or Miami and doesn’t attend games, we still want them to make an annual fund gift. So it's not necessarily tied to tickets.
There’s a confusion that Seminoles Boosters is really just a football fund, which it's not. It is for all sports, and we fund the scholarships for athletics. In addition to that, we raise money for facilities projects, the coaches' clubs, and there are a litany of other things that we do related to that.
Q: So if you make contact with a new donor, who maybe hasn't given before, how do you determine where their funds will go? Do you steer them in a particular direction based on their interests or your needs?
A: It's a great question, and we get asked that question a lot. I am starting to meet with head coaches next week and will talk to them about that because I want them to know: Our job is to support Florida State Athletics and Florida State University. We don’t direct where the money goes, we raise it. There will be a master plan for facilities that is being developed from the athletics department and university, and we’ll follow that.
But from a priority standpoint, we are going to talk about the annual fund first. And then we are going to get to know people to know where their interests are and if they want to do more. We will be donor-driven relative to where they want to give. If somebody is interested in giving to baseball, but we have a project going on over here with track, we aren’t going to push them to track if their interest is in baseball. If they have no preference, we are going to tell them our priorities. And if they want to help, they can help, we’d love to have them. And I say this, we stand as that kind of intersection between donors and student-athletes, and really trying to get the message both ways of what we do. It's donor-driven, but we do have priorities.
Q: I know at one point, FSU made a big push for the endowment, which would fund scholarships through the revenue it generates. We don't hear that talked about as much anymore. Is that because there are so many day-to-day needs that kind of supersede that?
A: It goes back to the priorities. If you ask, our priorities right now would be the annual fund and the No. 1 facility project on the board right now, which is the football center. The endowment, we want to raise money for it, and there are a couple of ways people can do it. They can make outright gifts, or they can do planned gifts. We will start talking more (with our staff) about planned gifts, wills, trusts, etc. We need to go back to people who have planned gifts with us and make sure we are communicating with them and telling them that it is important. Because it sometimes can get overlooked because it is not money today, it is in the future.
The endowment ... because it goes into a fund and we can spend a percentage of it, is why it sometimes gets shifted in priority. You’ll see the endowment talk come up more this year, but it won’t be our No. 1 priority because of the needs, annual fund and projects.
Q: There obviously are a lot of things going on right now with the changing landscape of college sports. And I'm not going to ask you what's going to happen with FSU in the future in terms of conference alignment, but how do those changes impact what you all can do with Seminole Boosters?
A: We study that. My day job is obviously raising money, so I am not consumed with it, but I do try to pay attention to it. ... I read a ton about NIL and the elephant in the room for every discussion these days, which is conference expansion and what is going to happen in the future. Because it does impact us. And we’ve had donors ask: Are we putting our best foot forward as a university and athletics department to put Florida State first? And the answer is yes, the leadership of this university, we want to be successful in everything that we do.
And the answer to your question is yes, we pay attention to it. The best-in-class mindset is there for us. Specifically, on NIL, Rising Spear is obviously well-known among Florida State circles as the group that is helping us. And they do a good job. We talk to them, and again, we have a state law where we have to keep at arm's length. But I think we have to communicate up to a point, and then we’re not involved. But in terms of who we’re talking to, who they’re talking to, the messaging and how it works and all that stuff, we have to talk to them. The Rising Spear folks are really, really good. And it is part of today’s college athletics.
Q: I think a lot of people thought NIL would become a major issue for booster organizations because people might start allocating more money to NIL than their traditional giving. How is that playing out?
A: The biggest issue right now for us is that we cant be involved in all of the discussions with a donor. If a donor asks about it, we’re like, "Hey, yeah, call them." For me, the best scenario is that if Seminole Boosters is sitting there and you’ve got -- and I am going to label off a bunch of things -- the annual fund, a facilities gift, an endowment gift, a coaches' club gift, they want to follow beach volleyball, great. We also want to be able to talk about NIL and Rising Spear and say, "Look, you tell us where do you want to give money and we will help you get there." That’s where we need to be, and we are kind of there right now. We can educate about Rising Spear, but we cannot necessarily be facilitating it.
Going back to the donor intent, we want people to give money to Florida State in any way, shape or form. If they want to give to the business school to help build the building, great. Go do it. Because it helps Florida State. Ultimately, donor-driven with priorities.
Part Two will take a closer look at the Seminoles' planned standalone football facility, the alignment between the athletics department and the fundraising organization, opportunities with FSU Baseball improvements and more.
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