North Carolina State University Athletics
Bobby Purcell Q&A: On Reaching 20,000 Members
1/8/2008 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
BY TIM PEELER
Around 10 a.m. on Dec. 31, that goal was reached, as the Wolfpack joined Penn State, Clemson and Texas A&M as the only schools to have 20,000 members in their booster organizations. In all, Purcell and his staff recruited nearly 3,000 new members during the 2007 calendar year.
Memberships are still coming in, as they typically do between Christmas and the first full week of the New Year. As of late Monday afternoon, there are now 20,229 members of the Wolfpack Club.
“It’s a wonderful testament of how dedicated Bobby and his staff are to sustaining and improving NC State athletics,” said NC State athletics director Lee Fowler. “And it is also a great show of support by fans. We definitely don't have the number of alumni that some schools have and to become only the fourth school to reach that number is really an amazing accomplishment by the Wolfpack Club staff and our community of supporters."
For Purcell, selected by his peers as the 2007 National Association of Athletic Development Directors Fundraiser of the Year, reaching the goal is the culmination of an effort that was first stated in 2000, when there were still fewer than 15,000 members in the Wolfpack Club.
Since then, however, fundraising campaigns have generated more members and greater donations, as the WPC helped finance unprecedented facilities improvements and expansion for nearly every NC State varsity sport.
Purcell talked with GoPack.com about reaching the 20,000-member goal and what’s next for the Wolfpack Club and NC State athletics.
GoPack: When did you first set the goal to reach 20,000 members and why was it important to get to that number?
Purcell: We are a very goal-oriented organization and every year we have a theme. In 2007, it was the “Quest for 20,000” and in 2008 it is going to be “Red, White and You.” It gives us a focus for the coming year. As we started growing the Wolfpack Club in numbers, we realized there were very few schools in the country that have ever reached the 20,000-member milestone. So we set that as a long-term goal in 2000, when our membership was 14,898. That’s when we began talking about it. We were very confident that we could get it done, and ’07 seemed like the year that if we did everything we could to the best of our ability, that we could reach the goal.
GoPack.com: How did the Wolfpack Club become so large over the years, when there are so many other schools with more alumni and the potential for more membership?
Purcell: Our goal has always been to be real strong at the grass-roots level, which lends itself to having bigger numbers. We want the Wolfpack experience to be a family affair for everybody. We want people to be involved and have their whole families involved. We want our game-day experiences to be family outings.
GoPack.com: Talk about the satisfaction of reaching the 20,000-member goal.
Purcell: Throughout all the changes we have had in the athletics department and the university over the last decade, our fans have always been there for us and helped us reach our goals. Every fan plays a part in it. This is a goal that all 20,000 can be proud of. It doesn’t matter how much they give they all count towards this goal. So this is something we are very proud of. We want to continue to build and earn the trust of our donors and get them more involved. We want to continue to fine-tune the things we are doing and make them better.
GoPack.com: What is the next step for the Wolfpack Club, in terms of helping out with facilities? What should be on the drawing board next?
Purcell: We will work with athletics director Lee Fowler, who will decide what the next commitment will be in terms of facility improvements. He will come to our board to ask to fund it or to fund it and build it. But I believe the long-range needs are to continue to improve everything we have. That was the mistake we made for years we didn’t keep them up to date. There are some improvements that still need to be made to Doak Field and to the Isenhour Tennis Facility and continued improvements for all our facilities. We have talked about a press-box are and other amenities at the new Derr Track and Soccer Field. We are still raising money for the Reynolds Coliseum upgrades. Long-range, we need to do a renovation for the East Concourse of Carter-Finley Stadium, to bring it up to the same standards as the West Concourse, so that the stadium will be symmetrical. All fans should have the access to the same facilities. We would like to make some improvements to the parking lots in phases, with a lot of paving to be done over time, as we can afford it. We also need an indoor practice facility for all our teams to use. These are all things I think we should probably be looking at.
GoPack.com: If there is one thing you could improve most over the next five years, what would it be?
Purcell: We still have to pay off the
GoPack.com: What is the endowment right now and what does it need to be to pay the annual cost for all athletic scholarships?
Purcell: We have about $46 million committed to the endowment and about $21 million in money contributed. We would need about $140 million in the endowment to earn the $7 million per year we spend on scholarships. As far as I know, there are only two schools in the country who are fully endowed on their athletics scholarships, Stanford and
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
