And the "little fish" donors don't always turn into "big fish."
You're right, they don't - but some of them do. And you don't need very many of them to turn into "big fish" to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Try talking to a "small fish" UT graduate sometime. Ask them about their experience with UT donor solicitations - when did UT start soliciting donations, how often do they contact you, etc. Compare that to your own experience with CU.
Actually, I'll save you the trouble. A friend of mine is a UT graduate. Since graduating UT, she's taught English in South America ~5 years (I'll give you a hint: people don't do this for the money), gone to graduate school (2 years), and worked as a glorified office manager (4 years). She is definitely a "small fish" when it comes to being a UT donor.
When did UT first begin soliciting donations? -Before graduation. Seriously, the school started actively soliciting donations when she was junior.
How often do they call asking for donations? (notice: call, not email or mail) - 2 or 3 times a year.
Now tell me, when you compare that to your experience with CU fundraising, do you think there just might be a reason why UT has a much more developed "donor culture?" Do you think this model has paid off?
Yes, they are bigger than CU, but not much bigger (2013 Freshmen enrollment: UT: 7,252 CU: 5,469). We're talking about large enough alumni population samples that there shouldn't be a large income disparity between the populations, so just based on size they should bring in about 33% more in donations than we do. Ok, I don't know if this is true or not, but I will even grant that maybe UT has historically been larger than CU, so let's go out on a limb and say that just based on size, they should bring in 2 times as much as CU does. Schools don't tend to publish total annual giving numbers (or they are hard to compile), and annual numbers are lumpy, but a good approximation of historic donating is endowment size.
Where was I? Oh yeah, that being very generous to UT because of their added size, they should raise about twice as much, and consequently we would expect their endowment fund to be twice as large as CU's.
CU Endowment: $ 385,666,597
UT Endowment: $2,861,389,483
Um, that's a little more than twice as big...
What they are doing is working, and they fully engage every single alumni starting from while they are still in school, and regardless of whether they are a "big" or a "little" fish. What CU is doing is not working.