CHAMPAIGN — A new name, image and likeness collective is targeting big-money donors and arranging contracts for University of Illinois student-athletes.
Set to formally debut this week, ICON Collective (stands for Illini for Charitable Opportunities and Networking) is the second active NIL fundraiser centered on UI student-athletes, joining the group Illini Guardians.
“We continue to support and make sure that (the Illini Guardians) feel good about continuing their operations — they’ve built an awesome, robust grassroots subscription model,” said ICON CEO Kathleen Knight. “We really felt that there was a need for this kind of larger-level investment entity.”
After meeting with Knight last week, the Guardians are on the same page, said co-founder Louis Margaglione.
“In some ways, we are tunneling from different sides of the same mountain,” he said.
The groundwork has already begun out of the spotlight for the new NIL collective headed by Knight, who up until last fall was a high-level development officer for UI athletics. ICON has offered $1.5 million in NIL contracts to the football team and sent Illinois players to several community events, she said.
“That’s something we’re super proud of — some of those contracts are in process and pending, but we’ve had athletes signed with us out in the community, some of them even more than once,” Knight said.
Working for the UI Office of Athletics Development in Chicago, Knight took an active role “trying to drum up support” for NIL among donors and alumni last year, she said.
When NCAA guidance in October called for disentanglement between athletics’ staff and NIL activities, the UI had to change up its strategy. Athletics employees could no longer help draft contracts or negotiate on behalf of athletes.
School personnel can request for donors to help fund NIL causes and collectives but can’t suggest they donate for a certain sport or athlete. School staff can’t work for or hold ownership stakes in NIL entities, either.
With the support of her colleagues, Knight left her university post to head up a new collective focused on securing major donations that keep the UI’s NIL market humming. Priority No. 1 was to sit down and offer contracts to Illini football players before the transfer deadline.
“It was really a reaction to the latest items to be sure we didn’t lose momentum,” she said. “It all happened very quickly, but there was a lot of thought and strategy put into it.”
Multiple NIL collectives operating around the same campus is nothing new, said UI NIL coordinator Kam Cox.
“Running a collective is a lot of work; effectively, it’s easier when that work is split up,” he said. “Several options out means people can interact with NIL in the way they’d like to.”
As a former student-athlete and recent athletics development officer, Knight is “really in tune with our interests as a department, and she’s in tune with where we want to grow,” Cox said.
“That’s one of the big advantages we see across the country. When you have a former member of the athletic department that goes off and does this, there’s a level of alignment everyone can be proud of.”
Knight said she intends for ICON to complement the work of the Illini Guardians in the UI’s NIL space, though the two collectives have a few key differences.
Like some other NIL collectives across the country, ICON has applied for a 501©(3) nonprofit designation, which would make donors’ contributions tax-deductible. Guardians is a 501©(6).
To fit tax-exempt nonprofit guidelines, ICON plans to send Illini athletes exclusively to charitable events and causes in exchange for contracts. Think after-school programs and Boys & Girls clubs, Knight said.
“Everything that we have our student-athletes do has to be charitable in nature. We can’t sign deals for our student-athletes to sign autographs and take photos and do general appearances,” she said.
While Guardians has made its name engaging with the median Illini fan with the occasional big sums, ICON is explicitly courting major gifts to support NIL contracts with athletes.
And whereas Guardians is driven by volunteers with help from paid consultants, ICON will employ a full-time staff.
ICON’s focus, at least early on, will be on athletes in revenue sports.
“A lion’s share of the NIL opportunities have fallen into the hands of football and basketball players and other revenue-generating athletes in other sports — that will continue to be a focus for us, though not an exclusive focus,” Knight said. “We will absolutely make a good-faith effort to extend NIL opportunities to all 21 of our sport programs.”
ICON is now a team of two, after onboarding former Associate Director of Athletics Jackie Szymoniak as its chief operating officer earlier this month. And they’re still hiring, Knight said.
After nearly two years of legality, NIL’s influence on the college sports world continues to grow across the country. Illini Guardians completed more than 270 deals with student-athletes across every varsity program, Margaglione said.
“It’s easy to wag the finger at NIL as a destructive and negative force in the business, and that’s one opinion,” Knight said. “But not only are we providing opportunities in the community, this is an educational opportunity for our student-athletes — and we don’t want to miss out on that.”
