What an incredible first year for our little foray into the world of NIL. Everyone who contributed and participated in the SyraCRUZ Tailgate project should be proud of what we accomplished and is hopefully excited for what is to come.
For the year we ended up with donations in the amount of $16,635. We supplemented that with profits from $6690 in merchandise sales (T-shirts, autographed photos and koozies) with those profits split between the athletes and our fund. We completely sold out of 240 T-shirts (with a hanful of those comped to Enrique and tailgate guests) We sold out of 25 photos each of Benny Williams and Joe Girard III and also sold most of the 50 photos of Enrique Cruz and Chris Elmore that we purchased. While demand was not quite as strong for Riley Figueiras (mens' lacrosse) photos we still moved 17 of 25. Unfortunately our women's basketball guests were too new to the program to provide photo proofs. And we went through 181 koozies. Cost of merchandise including shipping supplies and remaining inventory was $4619.
Our project paid the following amounts to our sponsored athletes in 2022 including naming rights, appearance fees and a share of merchandise profits:
Olivia Owens and Dyaisha Fair (women's basketball) - $500
Riley Figueiras (men's lacrosse) - $600
Benny Williams and Joe Girard III (Men's basketball) - $625
Chris Elmore (Football) - $2150
Enrique Cruz (Football) - $6685.
Total - $10, 560
We have a healthy balance of just over $7000 to start next year but as you can see from the payouts above we will be looking for your support again to continue at this level in 2023.
While not strictly part of the NIL project our SyraCRUZ 50-50 raffles had a record year.
Over the course of seven home games and 3 TexanMark special roadies we took in $7487 and paid out $3740 in prizes. Generous winners contributed $570 of that back to the cause. We also collected $489 from non-attendees to support our two major philanthropic efforts - $1000 each to Building Men in support of Chris Elmore and the Tenth Mountain Division Association in conjunction with Military Appreciation Day. This was our sixth event supporting the Tenth Mountain Association and brings our overall contribution to $4684. We also made a donation of $144 in support of a campus wide organizational fundraising challenge in support of Otto's Army.
Our 50 from the drawings that is not donated to charitable organizations is used to purchase equipment to enhance your tailgating experience. Major purchases funded this year included additional chafing dishes, cateraide hot box and insulated bags to handle the increased food demand larger crowds brought, drawing second prizes of full size footballs autographed by Chris and Enrique, two new SyraCRUZ banners, two new pop up canopies and a Margaritaville frozen drink maker presented as a sharable gift to our patron saint, Nell!
Amazing yeaar for all involved. Now we're looking for a little down time before we ramp up for 2023!
