An anthropologist, former department head at Notre Dame, now at Princeton, specializing in research on old stone age “humans”, Homo Erectus, HE-man for short, was visiting one of the many sacred forests in Asia and told this story.
For centuries pilgrims have trekked to this sacred forest to stroll among its majestic trees and watch the monkeys and other inhabitants of the woods. Vendors operating outside the forest have for ages sold the pilgrims food to take with them on their stroll. The food in times past would be wrapped in banana leaves and when the pilgrims had eaten their food they’d just throw the banana leaves onto the forest floor where in time the leaves would decay and nourish the forest.
As society progressed plastic took the place of the banana leaves, but the plastic doesn’t decompose as the leaves had done. The plastic began to accumulate in the forest soil and choke out the life of the forest. It began to die. The anthropologist, speaking with the official responsible for the forest, urged that laws be passed to protect the forest.
The official broke out in hilarious laughter. The anthropologist was stunned. He wanted to know what was so funny about this life and death situation. The official replied that if you want to change people’s behavior you aren’t going to do that by passing laws. He said the only way to change people’s behavior is to change what they believe.
The anthropologist after much consideration developed a definition for belief. He said belief is the ability to combine histories and experiences with imagination, to look beyond the here and now. It enables humans to see, feel, and know an idea that is not immediately present to the senses, then wholly invest in making that idea one’s reality.
In Danny White’s recent announcement regarding revenue for the athletic department he noted that we have 500 donors that each are contributing at least $25,000 per year. Spyre Sports in the summer reported that we had around 2,800 members of the Volunteer Club and the average contribution was $36 per month.
Obviously, we have some of the bigger donors helping out with NIL because memberships are raising around $1,300,000 per year but since NIL became a thing we’ve raised over 10 times that amount. The idea behind building out the membership of the Volunteer Club is to create a broad base of supporters so that the program is sustainable in the long run. Some programs around the country have already reported donor fatigue among their deep pocket donors. Our deep pocket guys are trying to buy us time to get our broad base of support in place and of course kudos to the Captains who are selflessly working to get that base built.
When I was a kid growing up in the 60’s and 70’s one of the gifts my mom would always give me at Christmas time was an annual subscription to Sports Illustrated. I was thinking perhaps one of the ways we could increase our numbers is to give our kids and nephews and nieces a Volunteer Club membership as one of their many gifts we provide during the holidays. Even though it didn’t cost a lot I always considered my subscription to SI a major gift and I’m pretty sure kids today, kids that love our Big Orange sports teams, would likely feel the same joy and sense of value from a membership in the Volunteer Club. jmo.
Clearly not everyone is in a position to support NIL and maybe some have an aversion to the idea of NIL. Still there are others who have jumped on board and are building this thing and make no mistake about it, this thing is not being built for the players or even the university. It’s being built by the fans for the fans. This is our sport programs, our football team, basketball teams, baseball and softball teams, etc. Without the fans, who cares? CBS recently said our sports programs were collectively No. 1 among all of the colleges in the nation. That doesn’t happen without our fans so to all of our fans and specifically to every single one who has become a member of the Volunteer Club, on behalf of our over 4,000,000 fans here in Tennessee, across the country, and around the world, I just want to say thank you and to convey how much your shared support for our teams is genuinely appreciated.
Many believe we at Tennessee can have the absolute best NIL program in the country. I know a lot of you guys believe this and are invested in making that idea our reality. So again, thank you. If you know of fans that are helping out that don’t frequent our forum I think we’d all be grateful if you would convey our thanks and appreciation to them as well. #GBO