This is not a defense of Thomas. However, I graduated in 92. I was a 4 year season ticket holder in BB and FB. Moved to Chicago suburbs for work. I made annual return visits for at least 1 FB game with my close knit college friends in 93-94-95-96 until I moved from the midwest. Went to multiple BB games when I'd come back to midwest for Xmas after moving. Went to see Illinois in the city I live or close to it. Bought tickets through the alumni association, etc. Bought lots of merch through the Illini store.
As any college grad, I received multiple, repeated, and constant requests for donating to UIUC as a whole and a lot from my major's school.
I didn't receive one request from anyone in the athletic department during Guenther's tenure. I was a season ticket holder for all 4 years in both major revenue sports. I came back post grad multiple years in a row. Bought merch. All through means that anyone in the athletic department with any desire could have identified and targeted. Not once was I approached by Guenther's athletic department to support/donate/etc.
In 2012 less than a year after Thomas took over, I got a request from the athletic department for the first time. I was an EASY target to go after for anyone that had any semblance of competence at all.
No one has done more damage to this program than Ron Guenther.
This certainly is not a defense of RG and I don’t know the advancement policies at Illinois now and certainly not back then. While it seems odd that the athletic department wasn’t reaching out to you given your “relationship” with it, fundraising at universities — especially large ones — is highly orchestrated. Certainly at the lower levels it is less so, but still occurs. You never mention whether you donated to the overall school or your major’s school. If you did, that might have led to a “hands off” for the athletic department.
Illinois also very likely has plenty of research on the typical giving entry points — not just overall but at various stages of a potential donors life. Possibly the research shows that for X number of years after graduation an alum is much more likely to give to overall school or major’s school than sports and that during those early years alums are likely to consider going to a game or two as their annual financial support for athletics. Given that and not wanting to completely inundate alum with donation requests (at least more than they do), maybe at the time more general appeals are more successful in general.
Again, a lot goes into fundraising at large schools. Depending on the structure of the advancement department, the AD likely has very little input on fundraising and who is solicited at the lower levels. So I can understand that it seems strange to you that athletics wouldn’t be reaching out to you from the get go, and maybe they missed the boat on you. But I highly doubt RG or even the athletics department was truly to blame. Plenty of other things to blame on them though.