Earlier this year Chris Barker was promoted to Executive Associate Athletic Director and Chief Revenue Officer at NIU and he told Rotarians this week that long title means he is tasked with building donor financial support for athletics at the university. So far, Barker says he is seeing success. He said last year’s donors growth for the Huskie Athletic Fund was 64% over the prior year and year to date it is up 7% over last year. Barker attributed this success to personal relationships. He says he and his staff of four concentrate on a 30-mile radius of DeKalb (where the largest number of NIU graduates reside) making a target of 19 contacts a week.
Barker says an important talking point to donors is how Huskie athletics develops an athletes skill plus a pathway to graduation. He said in this age of a wide-open transfer portal and uncapped pay to athletes, the culture of NIU to focus on the developmental growth helps set them apart. He acknowledged that the Huskies are not offering million-dollar attraction pay for someone to come to NIU. He added that with about 400 student athletes on campus, only 236 have an athletic scholarship. But Barker added that all of these athletes, many first-generation college students, learn important life skills both in the classroom and by giving over 4,000 community service hours to local organizations.
Barker is optimistic that NIU’s new conference alignment for football (with the Mountain West) and the Horizon League for most of the remainder of the school’s sports will help build on donor interest in supporting the athletic program. NIU requires tickets for only four sports: football, men’s and women’s basketball, and volleyball. Barker expects these sales to be on the uptick going forward because of the conference changes and the quality of the team experience from students with a passion for their total college experience.