I hadn’t donated in a while and just did a new one last night. I’m not a ticket guy so I don’t care about the tickets they will want to give me as I’m not close to Blacksburg.

What I really wanted to do was set up something simple and recurring on my credit card. I spent 15 mins trying to figure it out. Then I finally said screw it I’ll just donate a couple years of recurring in one chunk (the wrong decision for VT as I would have probably donated for 20 years or more with the credit card, now I’ll have to remember to donate again sometime). Then, when I pressed Submit they would not process my donation in the absence of providing my phone number. If you are in retail you know the phone number isn’t necessary to process a card transaction. They forced it because they want to call me. I don’t want to be called. At this point I nearly abandoned altogether and decided to write a scathing email to the athletics department about how their sucky process discourages donations. Instead I powered through and did it anyway.

I guarantee there are many people like me who don’t want to be called, who would prefer an easy recurring card transaction. $25 per month vs $300 one time each year are totally different mental decisions. VT needs to be selling subscriptions not donations.