You’re Closer Than You Think: Turning Alumni Athlete Engagement Into Fundraising Success
For many athletics departments, the pressure is growing.
Budgets are tighter, expectations are rising, and the need to generate revenue is becoming more urgent. In response, it’s natural to look toward fundraising as the primary lever — launching campaigns, refining messaging, and working to drive stronger results.
But across athletics, there’s a pattern that often goes unaddressed.
Engagement and fundraising are frequently treated as separate efforts, run by different teams, measured in different ways, and executed on different timelines. Even when engagement is happening, it isn’t always connected to revenue in a meaningful way.
That’s where a shift is starting to take place.
The programs seeing the most consistent momentum don’t start with fundraising. Instead, they start earlier — by building the kind of engagement that makes fundraising possible in the first place, and by connecting those efforts more intentionally over time.
It doesn’t start with a campaign
Fundraising in athletics has traditionally been approached as a centralized effort. A campaign is built, a message is crafted, and outreach begins. While that model can be effective, it doesn’t always reflect how relationships actually work within athletics communities.
Former athletes and other communities, like parents and fans, don’t feel connected to a campaign in the abstract. Their connection is to their team, their coach, and the experience they had as part of the program. That connection is what lasts, and what ultimately drives action.
The programs seeing the most success lean into that reality. They invest in consistent, meaningful engagement with their athlete alumni and other affinity-based communities connected to their programs, creating touchpoints that feel natural and relevant rather than transactional. Over time, that consistency builds trust, increases participation, and strengthens the sense of community.
When a giving opportunity is introduced, it doesn’t feel like a shift in the relationship. It feels like a continuation of it.
What happens when you lead with engagement
At Oregon State Athletics, this approach began with a focus on reconnecting former student-athletes and re-engaging the broader community connected to their programs in a way that felt consistent and sustainable.
Rather than launching immediately into a campaign, the team focused on building a rhythm of communication and creating opportunities for athlete alumni and other supporters to re-engage with their programs. The early focus was on participation — showing up, rebuilding connections, and creating momentum.
That foundation changed what was possible.
As engagement grows, fundraising can follow. Not because of a single large initiative, but because there was now an audience that was paying attention — and willing to respond. The relationship had already been established, which made the transition to giving feel natural rather than forced.
Even at this stage, the results are meaningful, including a 10x return on investment.
It’s a subtle shift in approach, but one that continues to compound over time.
The opportunity is already there
There’s often an assumption that meaningful fundraising in athletics has to come from large, department-wide efforts. And while those campaigns absolutely have their place, they’re only part of the picture.
One of the most underutilized opportunities in athletics is the ability to activate fundraising at the team level or within any affinity-based group connected by a shared experience, such as former athletes, parents, or sport-specific supporters. These efforts are often smaller and more focused, but they’re also more personal — tied to a specific program, a defined group of supporters, and a shared experience that already exists.
The impact of that approach becomes clearer when you look at it collectively.
A single team fundraiser that raises $5,000 may not stand out on its own. But when that same effort is replicated across a department, the numbers tell a different story. Twenty teams each raising $5,000 results in $100,000 in revenue, not from one large campaign, but from a series of smaller, connected efforts.
What makes this model powerful is the fact that these efforts are rooted in relationships that already exist, which makes them easier to execute and more likely to resonate. And because of that, they’re not just effective, they’re repeatable over time.
Making the most of what already exists
For Penn State Athletics, this approach has taken shape by focusing less on building new fundraising structures and more on activating the engagement that’s already in place.
Their strategy centers around moments — times when alumni are already paying attention and connected to what’s happening within their programs. These might include key points in the season, program milestones, or specific initiatives that feel tangible and relevant.
That’s exactly what played out with Penn State Nittany Lions field hockey. The program set a goal of 125 donors for a targeted campaign tied directly to their community and experience. Instead of launching a broad, standalone fundraising push, they aligned their outreach with existing engagement, communicating in a way that felt natural to the relationships they had already built.
They saw immediate traction. Within the first week, they reached 42% of their donor goal, with significant time still remaining to build on that momentum. And just as importantly, this wasn’t a one-off campaign — it’s a model that can be replicated across other teams and affinity groups within the department.
What’s notable is who these campaigns reach. Many of these smaller, affinity-based groups (like former student-athletes within a specific program) aren’t typically asked to give and often represent entirely new sources of participation that wouldn’t be captured through traditional, centralized campaigns.
Rather than separating engagement and fundraising into distinct efforts, Penn State has aligned giving opportunities with those moments. When the connection is already there, the transition to an ask feels natural, relevant, and timely.
These efforts don’t rely on large, centralized campaigns. They’re smaller, more targeted, and often led at the program level. That makes them easier to execute, more meaningful to the audience, and highly repeatable over time.
As those efforts continue, they build momentum — not just in dollars raised, but in participation, consistency, and long-term connection.
Who gets to fundraise is changing
As this approach evolves, there is an important shift in who’s involved with fundraising.
In many athletics departments, fundraising has traditionally been owned by a central advancement team. While that structure is important, it can also limit scale in an environment where relationships are naturally distributed.
Coaches, operations staff, and program leaders, and even influential alumni or ambassadors within those communities, are often the ones with the strongest connections. They understand the nuances of their programs and the experiences that resonate most.
When those individuals are equipped with the right tools and guidance, they can play a meaningful role in fundraising efforts — not as replacements for advancement teams, but as extensions of them. This expands reach without losing authenticity and allows fundraising efforts to feel more personal and more connected to the athlete experience.
When teams take the lead
In practice, this shift often shows up in a simple but meaningful way: teams become more involved in their own engagement and fundraising efforts.
Rather than relying entirely on centralized outreach, coaches and staff begin to take a more active role in connecting with their alumni communities and other key supporter groups tied to their programs. That might mean sending updates, sharing milestones, or reaching out around key moments in the season.
When those touchpoints are already part of how a program operates, introducing a giving opportunity doesn’t require a separate campaign. It becomes part of the same conversation.
By enabling programs to lead engagement at the team level (with the right structure and support in place) athletics departments can create a more distributed and consistent approach to fundraising — one that feels more personal to the people they’re trying to reach.
Don’t overcomplicate the ask
It’s easy to assume that effective fundraising requires a fully built campaign, a polished strategy, and perfect timing.
But in many cases, the gap between engagement and revenue is much smaller than it seems.
Often, it comes down to making the ask.
When alumni and supporters are engaged, informed, and actively interacting with content, they don’t need a complex campaign to take action. They need a clear opportunity to support something they already care about. A simple, well-timed ask, especially when it’s tied to a meaningful moment, can be enough to drive participation.
The challenge is recognizing when the relationship is ready for the next step.
How this becomes a system
The programs seeing the most success aren’t trying to do everything at once. Instead, they’re building systems that can grow over time.
They start with engagement, creating consistent and meaningful connections with their athlete alumni and other affinity-based communities across their programs. From there, they introduce giving opportunities that feel natural, relevant, and timely. They expand participation by empowering more people to be part of the process, and they build momentum through smaller, repeatable efforts.
Over time, those efforts begin to compound.
And because this model extends beyond former athletes to multiple affinity groups across an athletics department, the total addressable impact is significantly larger than most programs initially realize.
What starts as a single team fundraiser becomes a model that can be replicated across programs. What begins as a one-time ask becomes part of an ongoing rhythm. And what might initially feel like a small effort becomes a meaningful contributor to overall revenue.
That’s the real shift.
Not just raising more through a single campaign, but creating a system where engagement and fundraising work together, reinforcing each other and driving sustainable growth over time.
Platforms like Athlete Network are designed to support this kind of model — helping teams build consistent engagement, activate more people across programs and affinity groups, and create natural pathways to giving over time.
