son goes in and plops 10K on Whit's desk and says "I want to be a Diamond Hokie (he is non-HC presently) and buy 2 tickets." Are you saying my son will will pick after a 10 year silver Hokie (1K/year donation) who makes the $1600 donation his 11th year. Even the old system heavily rewarded the current gift.

My current ranking is ~1000 with approximately 35K in total gifts (30 K more pledged), BUT 90% of that ranking is because of the 12000 points I receive as a Golden Champion. Under the new system if I am not rewarded a bunch of points for my large, one time donation (50K), I will fall like a rock. I really hope you are right because that is not what the HC told me.