Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

10/11/2011 at 1:30pm

Razorback Foundation memberships have reached a record level at Arkansas. By most accounts the Razorback Seat Value Plan (RSVP) project for football was a success, infusing the athletic department budget with more than $6 million in revenue.

Coaches in the school’s three major sports are locked up long term. Football has hit the midway point of the 2011 season with the best start of the Bobby Petrino era.

Naturally, athletic department officials are pleased with the direction of the program. Yet there’s no overwhelming sense of contentment filling the halls of the Broyles Athletic Center.

In fact, there is an awareness that the department needs to get better. Better at relating to donors. Better at helping ticket holders understand what comes with certain levels of giving. Better at creating an enjoyable and impactful game day experience at Razorback Stadium. Better at eliminating wasted manpower within the foundation and ticket offices.

Those are among the items covered in a 32-question survey issued late last month to Razorback Foundation members and open to all fans. Today at 5 p.m. marks the deadline for submission of an independent survey being conducted for Arkansas by Fayetteville-based CORE4 Research.

Give Jeff Long and his staff credit for seeing areas they can improve. Kudos to them for recognizing not all fans are happy, and being willing to open themselves up for suggestion.

Ask for an opinion and there’s a really good chance you’ll hear something you don’t like. That’s the risk run with giving the customer a voice.

But that’s the beauty of the survey. Arkansas is at least willing to listen. Doesn’t mean everyone will like the end result, but there’s at least an attempt at improving the product.

Chris Wyrick, senior associate athletic director for development, saw the need for feedback when working on RSVP. It was then he realized how little people knew about where they specifically stood within the broad giving levels.

“We want to know what are people’s thoughts,” Wyrick said. “Yeah, you open yourself up. You’ve got to be willing to listen to what people say. Are we willing? Yeah. Absolutely. How are we going to know unless we ask? We can get better. Give us some suggestions.”

Arkansas officials have ideas of their own. They’re asking for thoughts before moving forward with some of them and will get fan feedback from CORE4 Research relatively quickly after the close of business today.

Ideas being kicked around the department include a priority points plan for donors. Most BCS-level schools have what amounts to an incentive program in place that takes into account a current year’s donation, lifetime giving, support of multiple sports, letterman status, etc. Arkansas does not currently have tiers that take those criteria into account.

That leads to lots of questions that sometimes have no easy-to-explain answer. Sometimes the questions have no answer at all.

Why did some Broyles-Matthews donors get 50-yard line seats to the Sugar Bowl when others didn’t? How come folks of the same designation get worse parking preferences than their neighbor at a similar level?

Wyrick envisions a system in which standing is known ahead of time. “Publish a map. Let folks know where they rank and what seats they have access to ahead of time.”

Essentially, eliminate the guesswork.

Arkansas benefits because a customer wanting access to specific tickets or parking would have knowledge of what donation level must be hit. That could potentially provide an influx of cash as pledge drives hit the home stretch each year.

There’s also a section regarding the current setup for fundraising drives. Currently separate pledges are taken for baseball, football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s sports besides basketball and men’s Olympic sports. That means multiple billing cycles and what Wyrick described as “36-percent duplication of effort.”

Additionally, donors are also being asked to give feedback on game day experience.

Worried the suggestions won't be taken seriously? Consider how much better the game day atmosphere has gotten within Razorback Stadium week-to-week this season. That's one small example of a willingness to listen and improve.

“Maybe there’s a reason we do things the way we do. Maybe there’s not,” Wyrick said. “Let’s study it. Let’s see what people say. And then we’ll grow accordingly.”

Asking questions, making proposals and implementing changes doesn’t guarantee all fans will be happy. But it does allow Arkansas the chance to hear feedback. Most importantly it eliminates the complaint that nobody within the administration is willing to listen.

Tagged: Arkansas Razorbacks, Jeff Long, Chris Wyrick, Bobby Petrino, Razorback Foundation