Georgia State debuted on Wednesday a website for its Panther Athletic Club, which included new renderings of facilities it hopes to build.
The website, www.georgiastatepac.com, had been under construction for six months.
Panther Athletic Club is the athletic department’s fundraising organization.
“We wanted to make it clear and simple for people to be a part of the Panther family,” senior associate athletic director Rob Clark said.
GSU hopes the website, which can also be viewed on mobile devices, will increase membership in the club from its current 700 to 2,000 by 2017.
“There’s a lot going on in the next three years, and we want to make sure we are ready, whether it’s (purchasing) Turner Field or something else,” Clark said. “PAC membership is at the core of that.”
The website includes several information channels, including one that provides information on how to join. The cost is a minimum of $50, which can be paid over 12 months, to $10,000. People can join the PAC without having to buy tickets to athletic events. Clark, who worked on a similar project when he was an assistant athletic director at New Mexico, estimated that 70 percent of PAC memberships are tied to ticket sales, which he said is the national average.
The renderings for the proposed new facilities can be found by scrolling to Investment Gifts, and then by clicking again on Priority Projects. Within are the drawings and information about the $2.5 million strength-and-conditioning center for football, which will be located in the practice facility on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. There are also drawings for the $5.5 million sports-performance Center and $3.875 million academic-performance center, both of which will go where the aquatics center is, adjacent to the GSU Sports Arena.
There are also channels off the website’s main page which members can use to upgrade or request parking or tickets, all of the information about PAC, how to make investment gifts and how to contact the club. The previous PAC website was a channel on www.georgiastatesports.com.
“We wanted to make sure process is clear, what our objectives were,” Clark said. “When people give, we wanted them to see what the benefit is for them and the student athletes. A lot of that wasn’t described in our presence online.”
In addition to the website, Clark said GSU plans to host a coach’s caravan that will begin in April next year. Georgia State’s coaches will visit locations around the state where there are large amounts of alumni as the university attempts to use engagement as a means to find new PAC members.
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