Babson Honors Creators Of Innovative Athletics Alumni-Giving Competition
Babson College has presented the initial Entrepreneurial Thought & Action Award to Erin Martinovich, director, The Fund for Babson, and Jaime Mulligan, associate director, Special Gifts and director, Athletics Department’s relaunched B-Club, in conjunction with the Fund For Babson/Development and Athletics, for the creation of March Madness Athletics Giving Competition.
The 2014 fundraising competition engaged Babson athletic alumni as they competed to see which sport could bring in the most monetary donations for the College. It challenged the Babson community to donate to the college so that the winning athletics team could receive a $5,000 gift to the program, celebrate its victory with an alumni tailgate, and earn Nike fleece tops for each current student-athlete of the winning program.
This challenge was conceived to dramatically increase the number of alumni and current student athletes to participate in giving back to athletics, furthering the opportunities for programs to compete at the highest levels. It further served to educate athletic alumni and current athletes about the power of participation in giving – when joined together, gifts of all sizes make a big impact.
Format
All former and current student-athletes who played/play a varsity sport at Babson could participate.
A gift of any amount made to a sports team and/or the general athletics fund between March 1 at 12:00 a.m. and March 31 at 11:59 p.m. counted toward each team’s total.
The team with the highest percentage of alumni and current student-athletes giving during the month of March won $5,000 and an alumni tailgate next season.
Team percentages were based on number of team alumni and current student-athletes who made a gift between March 1 and March 31 divided by number of team alumni and current student-athletes. (team donors / team alumni and current student-athletes = participation %)
If persons played/play more than one sport, the gift counted toward the giving total for each team.
ET&A Award
The Entrepreneurial Thought & Action Award was created to showcase Babson’s commitment to bringing social and economic change and value to the community and the world, and to reposition failure as another learning opportunity for future work.