"If you feel so inclined donate to Team Makers and support NDSU Athletics by providing the funds for athletics scholarships. A perk of this is after you've done this long enough or with enough dollars you'll get start to get priority on things like new season tickets, reserved tailgating spots, Frisco tickets, etc"
~Me
But in all seriousness; yes, obviously.
No argument there. If the only reason someone voluntarily donates is to get themselves a shot a football season tickets they're looking at it the wrong way IMO and are likely going to end up wasting their money because, even if they don't have season tickets, they can pretty much guarantee themselves tickets to each game in the secondary market for a lot less than it would cost to build up their points to the spot they'd need to be at to get season tickets. Donate to support NDSU Athletics, not because you can't live without football tickets and think building up points is the path to satisfying that need.
This is literally 1/2 the current Team Makers I would be willing to bet.
Do they have membership numbers posted anywhere? Id be willing to bet you'd see a nice little spike in TM membership around 2012. Not to mention a spike in other NDSU season ticket holders for other sports in efforts for more PP for football.
If you're referring to the "mandatory donations" attached to season tickets you're probably right. Personally, I think the concept is dumb and hopefully it'll go away now that the main perk, that is the tax deduction loophole, for it is gone. There's no such thing as a mandatory donation... if it's mandatory it's not a donation it's a fee. I was glad to see that deduction eliminated because to lump in those "fees" with other charitable donations wasn't very fair to those who make legit charitable donations. I hope now they just start selling those prime tickets for what they cost and make the face value of each ticket indicative of what they cost. So $3000 per season ticket and face value of $400 and some for each individual ticket for those best seats low along the 50 yard line.
The money comes into the athletic department regardless of whether it's ticket revenue or donation revenue although maybe the AD has to pay extra taxes on it if it's counted as ticket revenue compared to charitable revenue.... I don't know but, in any case, I would be interested to see the Team Maker numbers split out by season ticket fees and "non-mandatory" donations.