Northwestern got off to a slow start in the NIL game as the last Big Ten school to establish a collective. But now that TrueNU Collective is up and running, they are making up ground on their competitors.
In the last two months, the collective has collected almost $1.5 million in donations, according to executive director Jacob Schmidt. They made it halfway to their annual goal of $3 million without a website that would allow fans and alumni to make contributions.
That website, TrueNU.org, will be fully operational on Wednesday (it’s just a static landing page now). There, individuals will be able to make fully tax-deductible donations that will, in turn, help TrueNU pay Northwestern athletes.
That’s the ultimate goal: to pay Wildcat players for the work they do for charities.
As we've written before, TrueNU is an NIL collective associated with partner charity organizations. Northwestern athletes will take part in events for charities – make appearances; tutor, mentor or coach kids; do social media work – and TrueNU will pay the athletes “a market rate” for their time and service with the money they collect in donations.
As the landing page currently states, “TrueNU energizes student-athletes, charities, and Northwestern University supporters to positively impact our communities.”
So far, TrueNU has partnerships with eight charitable organizations in the Chicago area, stretching from Evanston to the south side of Chicago, with more coming online soon, according to Schmidt.
They have worked with athletes from four Northwestern teams -- softball, women’s basketball, men’s basketball and, just recently, football -- and have made payments to about 35 athletes. Schmidt declined to disclose how much money those athletes received, citing contract confidentiality. But it's safe to say that the amounts are nowhere near the gold-rush numbers we've seen bandied about in the media for blue-chip football recruits at other programs across the country.
It's important to keep in mind that TrueNU is only part of the NIL picture for Northwestern student-athletes. While the collective is currently focused only on charities, athletes can enter into their own NIL deals with whomever they want. They can broker deals with private companies through Altius Sports Partners, a company to which Northwestern has outsourced NIL, or on their own. Quarterback Ryan Hilinski, for example, currently has an NIL deal with Allstate.
Plus, this partnership with charities is only the beginning for TrueNU. Schmidt said that the collective hopes to start a commercial arm over the summer that would enable them to broker deals with for-profit companies that could, in theory, offer athletes more money. It would also allow Northwestern to leverage its proximity to, and connections with the Chicago business community.
So far, Schmidt and his team of volunteers have raised that $1.5 million by going to Northwestern families that have supported the athletic department in the past.
"It was a lot of coffees, a lot of lunches and a lot of meetings," said Schmidt, who played football for the Wildcats from 2007-11 and then went to work for the football program. "Between the relationships I’ve built over the last 15-plus years with Northwestern and the overall mission of TrueNU really resonating with our supporters, we’ve made some major strides here early."
Now, TrueNU is opening a donation channel to all Northwestern fans and alumni via the website. Schmidt hopes that this will substantially increase the number of donations, as well as dollars.
So far, many donors are making a four-year commitment of giving to the collective, according to Schmidt. The organization’s goal of $3 million, he says, “gets us in the game,” but he hopes to soon surpass it. He says that most schools have NIL budgets in the range of $3 million to $13 million.
A big step for TrueNU occurred last week, when the football team was brought on board (TrueNU aims to work with athletes during their offseasons). TrueNU’s first NIL deal with football players occurred on Sunday, when Rod Heard II, Bryce Gallagher, Coco Azema, Ray Niro III, Bryce Kirtz and Charlie Mangieri worked an event for Gratitude Generation, a charitable organization.
All of the players were paid for their time by TrueNU, but Schmidt declined to give amounts, again citing contract confidentiality.
But, he said, “It’s the first of many [for football].”
Long-term, Schmidt says that TrueNU wants to raise enough funds to create a base salary through NIL for all Northwestern athletes who participate. While head coach Pat Fitzgerald is dead-set against using NIL as a recruiting incentive – as NCAA rules expressly prohibit – it would at least allow the program to inform prospective athletes how much money they can make should they choose to become Wildcats.
Other high-profile Power Five programs have similar setups for their collectives, says Schmidt. He believes a salary system is the fairest way to reward all athletes and avoid any locker room dissension.
“It’s contingent on fundraising, but we want to do things the equitable way,” he said. “We want to give opportunities to every athlete and guarantee them a certain level of income any given year.”
The idea is to provide a graduated salary scale, offering athletes a dollar amount that will increase each year, from their freshman to their senior years.
Unlike most collectives, TrueNU hopes to eventually support athletes from all 19 varsity sports at Northwestern. But, at the same time, they know where their bread is buttered: athletes in the two revenue-generating sports – football and men’s basketball – will be offered higher salary levels than the others, according to Schmidt.
The actual compensation, though, will in large part be determined by donations. Schmidt said that donors will be able to earmark their money for certain programs on the website. So if a group of NU softball alumni, for example, make a large gift for softball players only, then those athletes may make more than others.
Schmidt encourages all Northwestern fans and alumni to visit the TrueNU website. He hopes that many decide to make a contribution, or even suggest charitable organizations with whom True NU might want to work.
TrueNU is just getting started, but Schmidt likes where they are headed.
“TrueNU is doing things the right way,” he said. “The Northwestern way.”
