Greetings Cyclones!
We made it, welcome to game week! It’s the best time of year to hang out with 61,500 of the Cyclone Nation to watch Coach Campbell’s team take on the new look Big 12.
Support of the We Will Collective has had a direct impact on the excitement leading into this season. I hope you feel an extra sense of pride when the Cyclones take the field on Saturday.
The NIL world in college athletics is changing rapidly by the week, but the one constant is the need to stay competitive with our peers and increase funding.
This past off-season we had multiple Cyclone Football players receive contract offers of more than $500,000 and everyone stayed for considerably less than that amount.
Those amounts are only going to go up as the NIL world matures and schools get more sophisticated with their support. Our best way to spread the word is through you. So when you are at your tailgate or with friends at Jack Trice Stadium, reiterate the importance of supporting We Will.
We are extremely grateful for Cyclone Nation’s continued, loyal support. We have gone from raising $700,000 in year one to $1.8 million in 2023 to a goal of more than $5 million this season.
It’s hard to nail down exactly where that puts us relative to our peers, but based on the intel from our coaches, we are in the lower third of the Big 12 in NIL support and significantly falling behind some of the powerhouse schools in other conferences.
We have several ways you can support our efforts. The most direct way is to make a direct donation or sign up for a monthly, recurring donation/membership. For the next 30 days, we have a kick-off We Will Give challenge with a donor that is matching up to $200,000 of all funds raised.
We are integrating a creative, new way to engage the power of our charitable partners by giving a small percentage of the amount raised through this website (wewillgive.com) back directly to those local organizations. This helps fulfill our mission of impacting our area as well as spreading the word about the positives of NIL far beyond our Cyclone Nation base. Click this link at wewillgive.com to check out our special programming and incentives for this challenge and please share with your networks.
Donating directly to us like you could in the past through our website or continuing to be a We Will member is also just as impactful!
We are very mindful of the increased costs it takes to be a Cyclone fan, but not investing in this area during this time would put our coaches at a large disadvantage of keeping their championship rosters intact.
And don’t forget about our numerous collaborations to make your tailgates a little bit more enjoyable as you’re supporting the Cyclones with each purchase.
More than anything, I want to thank you. Thank you for choosing to be a Cyclone and for choosing to support in this way. We may not have a bunch of oil tycoons at Iowa State like some of our Big 12 peers, but we have all of us. And that is going to make the success this season even sweeter. See you at the Jack.
Go Cyclones!
Brent
