The Grove Collective executive director Walker Jones answers questions about major Ole Miss NIL initiative (2024)

Executive Director Walker Jones of The Grove Collective was kind enough to answer Inside the Rebels readers' questions in this exclusive Q&A. The Grove Collective is the NIL arm whose purpose and intent is to build a stronger athletics program at Ole Miss through NIL initiatives and opportunities for student-athletes. These are all questions submitted for Mr. Jones by readers of Inside the Rebels through either message board posts or direct message...

Question: Who is The Grove Collective?

WALKER JONES: The Grove Collective was started at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022 by an attorney in Jackson named William Liston and his partner Mac McDonald, both of which are great Ole Miss fans. William was involved in helping write the state legislation of NIL and the statute and had a good understanding of what was required and what the state would allow. He basically raised his hand and said we need to form a third party collective to provide an NIL platform for our Ole Miss student-athletes per our Mississippi state statute which allow for NIL. And that's what he did. He started again back at the end of the year. William, in addition to this, he runs a full-time law firm, so he was dedicating his time outside of his day job to building this and was able to go out and raise an initial round of funding through the Ole Miss network and fans and donors and was able to provide NIL solutions initially starting in the spring and through the summer to where we have now almost 80 athletes under contract. William had built it. He had taken it as far as he could take it.

This summer I started having discussions with Keith Carter and other coaches and other interested stake holders about the need to grow and to consolidate and to build a sustainable structure for Ole Miss to be out front. That's kind of where I got involved and over the course of a couple of months this summer, we really worked to put together a sustainable plan and structure with some full-time dedicated resources and a consolidated approach to where we could have one third-party NIL collective that would serve all Ole Miss athletes. That's what we've done.

It's a for-profit LLC but really functions as a non profit, where we're trying to pass through the vast majority of our funds to the athletes. The only money that doesn't go to the athletes is for administrative and operational costs for programming, for staffing, etc. to support the athletes. So, that's what it is in a nutshell.

Question: Are the donations to the The Grove Collective tax deductible?

WALKER JONES: If they come from a business entity, they can be. If business chooses to take part and to donate to the NIL, they can write that off for advertising because the athletes are providing a good service to publicize that business, so that particular business can write off that donation for advertising costs, because they're getting that back from the athletes and the collective in return. Personal donations are not tax deductible. But if you run them through the business you do have the ability to count it as advertising, which is deductible.

Question: Will every dollar collected go specifically to NIL? There has been discussion that some donors have agreed to pick up the over head and staffing costs.

WALKER JONES: Yes and no. I think that will become true once we have built a reoccurring revenue model with a very strong member base and subscription base. Right now, we're building this structure and year one costs are going to be our most substantial. We have had some donors step up and have agreed to donate money for capital expenses and operational expenses, but those won't cover everything. There will still be some small percentage that will go toward operational and other strategic partnerships. We're going to announce some really important partnerships with some regional and national brands where we're going to spend a little money on the front end, but it's going to deliver a windfall of not only some compensation but marketing activation for our athletes with these groups. Ultimately, when we get down the road and we get on more stable ground from a funding standpoint and we have that annual subscription base, then the majority of money that people donate will go directly to the athlete. There will probably be a very small percentage that will go toward some of the execution process and activation costs that we have, so when a fan gives money we have to do an activation for that athlete, whether a personal appearance or a podcast...any of those costs, which are minimal, will be covered with a small percentage of that. but again, our goal is that the vast majority of the money will go to the athletes. We have had some donors step up and give us assistance from a capital standpoint and we feel very comfortable about keeping our expenses low where the majority of that money will go directly to the athlete.

Question: If I was a member before the relaunch on Friday, how would I go about increasing my donation? I've been to the website and tried, but there doesn't appear to be an option.

WALKER JONES: If he can send us a direct message. We've had that come up a couple of times. We can go in and we can change on the backend his membership. The simple way is people can go in and cancel their current membership and then re-up at a higher level. If they want to do that on their own they can certainly do that and just cancel that current membership and then re-up at a higher level, or they can just shoot us a direct message and we will go in and do it and make the change to their membership on the backend. They don't have to do anything other than just notify us who they are and what level they would like to go to.

Question: Will The Grove Collective unite with the other NIL funds under one banner for maximum efficiency?

WALKER JONES: That's what we've already done. There were three other groups that were in the NIL space that had either launched and collected money or were preparing to do so. We have consolidated those three into one, which is The Grove Collective. That was one of the things that Keith (Carter) and I talked about early on was consolidation. The reason for that is simple. Number one, risk mitigation. We want to mitigate risk by having it all controlled under one group with checks and balances with some controls and structure in place to make sure we're doing things the right way and we're being compliant. Number two, we want to be efficient. We want to use our resources smartly, make one dollar spend like three and create those efficiencies. Thirdly, I think that we want to clear any confusion. We want our donors and our fan base to know that they can go to The Gove Collective for a one-stop shop and not get phone calls for four different other groups trying to do the same thing. I think it will clear the confusion, as well. I think consolidation was incredibly important. We have already done that. There will be another group that will pop up at some point and we'll approach them, as well. We're all trying to accomplish the same thing. So yes, we have consolidated to this point and Ole Miss fans can know that of they want to partake in the NIL, The Grove Collective is a one-stop shop for them.

Question: Will The Grove Collective be involved in the supplementation of coaches' salaries or providing monies for facilities improvement at Ole Miss?

WALKER JONES: No. Number one, I'm sure there is a wide variety of legal issues as far as supplementing coaches' salaries. That's what the athletic foundation assists with. On facilities, no. We will not be involved in facility enhancements. This is a third-party entity...fundraising arm to compensate, develop and support our athletes. It's strictly that. Do we provide a great benefit? Absolutely. But it will stop there. We won't get involved in facility enhancements or something in coaching contracts.

Question: Where is the dividing line between what goes to the players and how much is dedicated to administrative costs. If my family gives $100 per month ($1,200 per year), how much goes to the athlete?

WALKER JONES: Our goal is that 90 percent of your donation, at the very minimum, goes to the athlete. So 10 percent could...possibly...be held back for administrative costs. Depending on what we're doing with the athletes, the nature of the programming, the activation. Remember, these athletes have to do something for their services. They have to provide a quid pro quo, so to speak, for what they are getting compensated for. There is cost in doing that, whether it be launching a podcast, doing media interviews, doing an autograph signing, doing a corporate appearance, doing a store appearance, running a clinic or a camp. All those things have certain costs that with it. Our goal is to be at that 90-10 threshold, where 90 percent is going to that athlete and 10 percent is just supporting the structure, the resources and the tools that we're putting around the athlete so they can maximize their NIL potential.

Question: Can my donation be specifically dedicated for one certain player of any certain sport?

WALKER JONES: Absolutely. Absolutely. Much like when you donate to the university for a specific season-ticket package or for facility enhancement, you can earmark your money based off where your interest lies and where you want to help. We had a gentleman who stepped forward and made a sizeable donation and he wanted it going specifically to women's basketball. So, we did that. so, yes. We have operating accounts for all the sports and fans can make it to the general fund or they can earmark it for specific sports.

Question: Can I do a one-time gift, or do I have to donate based on THE Gove Collective's tier levels?

WALKER JONES: You can give a one-time gift, yes. If you reach out and contact us directly. We have our tiered giving system, which you can pay annually or monthly. If you want to make a one-time gift to us, what I would recommend is just to reach out to us directly with an email or direct message and just say you would like to make a one-time gift. Our staff will then reach out to you directly to procure that gift.

Question: Will The Grove Collective incorporate more corporate sponsors and national brands as it moves ahead rather than solely relying on individual memberships?

WALKER JONES: Yes, we'll be doing both. We're under a major membership drive right now, because we need to create a reoccurring revenue model. We are also actively engaging to bring local, regional and national brands in as partners to support these athletes, to provide marketing campaigns for them. We are going to continue to focus on the corporate side of this, because there is a tax deduction opportunity in there. But also its a great experience for our athletes to get to learn how to work with companies, how to work with brands, how to support those brands, which is required of them, so it's very educational. And it's a big market for us, because we do think we have a national platform. I talked about the Oxford Chamber of Commerce partnership on Friday. It's a great partnership with them. It provides local and regional opportunities in and around the community for our athletes with the 700-plus businesses that either are in this area or do business in this community. There will be some national brands that we will bring to bear in forms of partnerships with our athletes. It's really a three-prong approach with national brands, corporate sponsors and rebel Nation in the form of memberships and subscriptions.

Question: You said membership numbers were around 300 before this past big weekend. What's the update now?

WALKER JONES: We've had great traffic since our announcement on Friday. We have had several hundred new members join. And we've had some of our current members up their commitments. We've seen great response. The traffic on the website has been very steady. We've gotten to the point where we've seen several hundred new members come in. We're actually going to put a member tracker on our home page that's going to show our goals of membership...2,500, 5,000, 10,000...and where we are in real time, so our fans can see as people join how that's progressing and then maybe, hopefully help us get there. I dare make the comparison that it is similar to the Jello-shot challenge in Omaha, but maybe that's what will get our fans going. I think any time our Ole Miss fans see a competition and they can see how they're doing and how they're progressing, I think it's valuable. That will be an added feature to our website here in the next couple of days.

Question: Will the amount the organization raises be released?

WALKER JONES: I think we'll probably stay away from total dollar figures for now. Just because that could be used against us in recruiting. One of the hard things about NIL is that you don't really know. There's so much urban legend and misinformation out there. One school says, 'Oh, they raised $15 million or $20 million.' Well, we don't know if that's true or not. We don't want to list specific dollar amounts because schools may try to use that. 'Well, Ole Miss only raised $5 million. We raised $2o million, so why would you want to go there.' We don't ever want to have that used against us in any form or fashion, so we'll probably keep those numbers confidential in terms of dollar figures. What we will release is total members, brands, programming, resources, tools. All those pother things we will release, so people can see all the good work that we're doing.