Colorado Mesa University (CMU) is planning to fully fund their athletic scholarships by 2025. To do this, the school must raise an additional $2 million a year towards athletics.
CMU already provides athletes with housing and meal waivers, on top of athletic scholarships. However, they are limited in this regard, as they must mix and match whether athletes will get a full tuition scholarship, or just a waiver for meals or housing to meet their budget.
“At Division 2, you’re able to break [scholarships and waivers] down, and you don’t just have to give out a complete full scholarship. I don’t believe that we have one student athlete that’s on a full ride just from the athletic scholarship, just because the funding isn’t there across the board,” assistant athletic director Rob Courtney said.
If successful, this initiative would allow more athletes to receive scholarships and waivers as well as “full-ride” scholarships. The school would then have a financial edge over others, as well as a renowned campus to entice high-level recruits.
Only two Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) schools are currently able to finance the NCAA maximum number of scholarships: Colorado School of Mines and Colorado State University – Pueblo. These schools have a recruiting advantage, as they are able to offer more scholarships than other RMAC members.
CMU fundraises through the CMU Foundation, which is an initiative that allows private donations to be gifted to the university. The school transfers the funds in a variety of ways, but they must go towards what the donor intended them for.
“Every sport has an equivalency, set by the NCAA, on how many scholarships they’re allowed to give out. We are funded for around 75-80% for the number of scholarships we’re allowed to give […] We’re raising money towards athletic scholarships, and the university is matching every dollar that we raise, up to $2 million. We are already a very competitive program, so imagine if we had more scholarship funds to really recruit the amazing athletes out there,” Vice President of Development and CEO of the CMU Foundation Robin Brown said.
CMU hopes that matching dollar-for-dollar will encourage donors to give more than they would otherwise.
“We believe sports are a really important part of the fabric of what we’re doing here. But, the truth is, that if you’ve only got so many dollars of general fund public support, all those probably need to be focused on academic endeavors. We must focus our fundraising efforts around things like athletics. […] The idea is to make [athletics] outstanding, but to do so, with as many fundraised dollars as possible,” CMU President John Marshall said.
The school hopes that athletics can achieve even greater success, and maybe even bring home its first- ever team NCAA championship with the additional funding.
