A look at IPTAY's Finances 2007-2009

During this offseason, we plan to investigate and compare Clemson's fundraising with other schools with which Clemson competes with recruits in a series of articles, this is just the first. The first step is to look at IPTAY itself and the membership trends over the last few years, along with their fundraising and expenditures over the time period. These are not the funds from the CUAD directly, merely IPTAY. We will then compare them to whatever data we can find from schools like Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, SC, etc. Not all of it is available online, though as public schools they are required to furnish the information. Only a few articles are ever available on the subject. We are currently digging up these figures to benchmark our competition and anyone who wishes to help in the research can email us at the addresses at the bottom of the page.

In accordance with the IPTAY Constitution (Article IV-2), the four priorities of IPTAY are as follows:

1. The payment of the annual cost of athletic scholarships.
2. The payment or reimbursement of the operating expenses of IPTAY.
3. The establishment and maintenance of an adequate reserve fund deemed appropriate by the IPTAY Board of Directors.
4. Any expenditures other than those established under the previous three priorities, shall be limited to either direct or indirect aids to the athletic program of Clemson University and must be approved by the IPTAY Board of Directors.

The following numbers were provided directly by Sr. Associate AD Katie Hill

Records for the new "Jervey" Level donations ($4200) were not provided, but Jervey level only goes into effect in 2010. Jervey is obviously intended to fill the gap between IPTAY and McFadden donorship levels, as you can see the significant dropoff between the two in terms of membership. Membership stats for the lower levels like Tiger Cub/Collegiate Club were not provided.

A few things stand out as evidenced by these numbers. The SEP was initiated in 2008 cycle, intended to boost monetary fundraising by making people pay more for the right to buy their season tickets. Its a system that is in place at other schools with whom we compete and did end up raising more funds for CU in 2008. However, it also pissed many of us off, as we would give more and get worse tickets. This is to be expected, everyone else gave more too and moved nowhere. This is a big part in why the membership levels dropped in 2009. Other factors include the economic downturn, tax changes, and the results on the football field in 2008. I suspect that small business owners tend to give in the middle membership levels moreso, and economic downturns hit them very hard. This may be why so many stopped giving altogether.

In the long run though, the SEP is better for the school, as you'll see below. I wish it didnt take us giving so much for Clemson to be good, but in reality college sports is all about money. Whoever spends the most will find it easier to stay at the top of their sport.

Now a look at IPTAY's full reports....

Fiscal Year Records for FY2007-FY2009, which end on June 30 of those respective years.

IPTAY Priority Four appears to me to be a discretionary spending fund determined by IPTAY and the CUAD. It is spent on various expenses in different years, such as Vickery renovations, stadium equipment, seating renovations, and pressbox renovations. The largest expenses from 2007-2009 are the following: Band expenses, Baseball lighting, CUAD Airplane (likely TDP interviewing candidates) at 1.275 million, WEZ furniture and transition, the new baseball stadium addition (1.7 million), and the South Egress (600K). Basketball marketing was a paltry $84,000 from IPTAY's funding.

I specifically asked Katie Hill about the CUF Board Reserve Fund since it looked suspicious to me.

Am I correct in assuming that the $2 million item marked "transfer to CUF board reserve" was a transfer made from IPTAY's budget to the University Fund?

NO. This is simply a separate fund to hold an IPTAY Board Reserve Fund.

Was this money moved towards an IPTAY endowment for use later by IPTAY/CUAD, or money requested by Sikes, and used to cover the state budget cuts to the school?

It is in a quasi-endowed fund (invested in Clemson University Foundation funds) so as to be invested in investment vehicles other than those of the Treasurer of the State of South Carolina.

It is a separate endowment where IPTAY invests/stores money for a rainy day then.

Because I did not understand where the money was going out of this budget into the Athletic Department, I asked her again these questions after comparing the above revenues and expenditures to the official budgets that are submitted by each school to the NCAA.

Mrs. Hill,

I have other questions, if you could take the time to answer. I'm curious in the documents you sent, where the IPTAY money is put? For example, IPTAYs spending funds for FY2009 are listed as $30,169,519. I don't see where any of it is transferred to the official AD budget documents you included, the numbers don't match up in the student aid row for example. Is this $30mil simply held in an account to cover things down the road, or given to the AD to spend somewhere in the Athletic Department budget? It seems to me to be a lot of money to be sitting on.

I also do not see where the money sent to Sikes Hall comes in, that Barker assessed from the auxiliary departments at $2.7 million. Is this taken out somewhere before submitting this document to the NCAA?

Her reply:

Sorry for the belated response to your e-mail from last week.

The term "Spending Funds" is a local term here at Clemson that differentiates those annual gift funds from endowments, or other restricted funds. The $30 million or so is indeed the balance at the end of the terms after making the a variety of transfers. The form of the "Agreed Upon Procedures (AUP)" statements for the athletic department's operations shows most funds transferred in the "contributions" line in Revenue.

Scholarships expenditures in the AUP also reflect the economic value of the out of state tuition that is "forgiven" by Clemson, so the amount shown as transferred for scholarships in the IPTAY statement are less (than is shown below). The Revenue element "Direct Institutional Support" of $2,924,005 is that valuation.

The University's administrative overhead charges and additional transfer appear in two places. Please refer to the 6/30/09 statement under "Other Operating Expense--Non-Program Specific". Of the $5,451,196, the amount of $1,995,905 is a transfer to the University characterized as General & Administrative Fees. Under Non-Mandatory Transfers the amount of $798,362 is what was characterized as a surcharge. These two amounts comprise the amount of transfers to the University.

Katie

We appreciate Mrs. Hill's timely and truthful responses. To put them in context, one has to look at the official NCAA AUP budget submitted to the US Government. This information is available online to everyone. If you don't want to read through the jibberish, scroll below the expenses. First, the Revenues:

I'll be comparing this to other schools we compete with later, and more in-depth, but from this I see that IPTAY is sending over $13 million for scholarships/funding to the AD. The additional $2.9 million institutional is the out-of-state rate that is waived for athletes on scholarship. $1.7 Million indicated here as "Learning Center" may be the Vickery Hall intake from IPTAY's expenses, though I'm unsure of the cause for the $10,933 difference between the two figures.

Some things we're going to look at later are the ACC Distribution, broadcasting and media rights.

Now for the expenses of the CUAD. I realize I present these without putting them in context for you. However, we will be using these figures to compare to other schools expenses later. I felt like it would be best to lay it all out once so you can see everything. In future posts we'll just reference this post for specific details.

The final adjusted operating fund balance, at the end of the FY was $8,593,865. Thats how much the AD has to spend at the end of the year, carried over from last year. You can see as a NET we lost a half-million bucks. Indirect admin support of $2 million is the amount taken away by Sikes Hall as a departmental overhead charge. Of the Nonmandatory tranfer row above, $798,362 is also sent to Sikes, for the total sum of $2.8 million that is quoted everywhere. The transfers to Sikes put Clemson AD in the red financially for FY2009.

The rest of the nonmandatory transfers is Band support, CU research, Student services, construction projects, and departmental support. The total IPTAY figure (2,884,000) is equivalent in the expense and revenue portion, and presumably it is balanced in the IPTAY books. Still, I dont see where the figures matchup, so money is being moved around.

The most readily apparent conclusion you should make is that football and basketball pay for themselves, while other sports (including baseball, which loses roughly $500,000 per) suck out $5 million dollars. Non specific funds, meaning that its not slated for any one particular program but for the AD as whole, are the biggest moneypit in the AD budget. That is the same everywhere.

For those immediately interested, TomahawkNation did a post that gives their opinion on Florida State's budget and compares theirs to other schools. Our intention here is to directly compare the schools we recruit against and look at the fundraising arms of those programe.

So, in my grossly uninformed financial opinion, it looks to me that IPTAY has money left to spend. We are finishing well in the black and made about $6 million over 2008's final FY budget figure of ~$24 million. Only $6 million actually is listed as scholarship money in the IPTAY budget, with $1.5-3 million as discretionary spending and IPTAY's own operational budget of nearly $3 million. It appears though that as much as $13.1 million is actually going over to the AD as "contributions" which must be the same amount listed as IPTAYs expenditures of roughly $13.9 million, but I'm not certain how they are moving the money around to different areas (not all $13.9 in the AD budget is actually going to scholarships).

Somebody tell me why we couldn't get Kyle Bunn a car to visit recruits, or allegedly not buy a new radar gun for the baseball team? This (the gun or any other training equipment) could easily be paid for under the same auspices that Priority Four funding pays for things like baseball lighting or a new soccer press box, or other equipment. This would require a closer look at just what IPTAY can spend money on as a 501(c)3 organization.

I also wonder why we have to add additional Strength/Conditioning support staff as part-time employees. I suspect it is because they are not academic-related positions, so they cannot be paid for by IPTAY's charter, though the Priority Four funding is not academic-related. This is something we'll investigate.

But my biggest question is this: What is IPTAY doing sitting on $30 million dollars?

We'll be comparing further in future articles.