The money is far from being "the same." The NIL collectives are a completely different animal than earmarked donations to athletic department projects.
There's always been a facilities race in college athletics, and it's been accelerated in the last 20 years (new buildings, new equipment, improved training facilities, academic centers, etc). The money that goes into those projects certainly has a purpose to help attract student athletes to a school. But their main purpose is to help them train and improve the students who are there while at that school. The money goes/went to a physical structure like a building, a weight room and equipment that the entire team/programs can use while affiliated with their respective programs. You can walk into Ohio's stadium tower, weight room, indoor facility or endzone facility today, and you can came back in 10, 20 or 30 years, and they'll still be standing (and will most likely have been renovated and improved with even more funds through donations). They were investments that were made that aided the construction of those facilities. Those donations went towards a project, they did not go to a student athlete for them to use the funds as they see fit. And the purpose of those donations ultimately benefits the student athletes as they become the beneficiaries, they reap the rewards from being able to utilize the projects those donations help create. It's a brick-and-mortar type of an investment that benefits many. It has a defined use and purpose.
The NIL collectives, however, are totally different. It allows people to give money to the collective that ultimately will result in a payout to players for "services." Don't even get me started on that part. But the NIL collectives are literally used to compensate players directly. Pay them to stay at a school, pay them to leave their school for another. It's taking your money, giving it to the collective, and it eventually ending up in the players' bank accounts to do whatever they want with it. Buy a new car, go on a shopping spree, drink it away on Court Street, save it, invest it, whatever. This is clearly different than making donations. Yes, it all concerns money, but it's apples and oranges as to where the money goes and how it is actually used.
You're describing how the money's being used, not where it came from.
The NIL donor base is basically exactly the same as the school's donor base for facilities and the like. These NIL collectives aren't magically creating millions of dollars in net new donations. The money's the same, it's now spent differently.
As a college development officer I can say you're spot on. At an individual donor level, the alum who gives to athletics (most donors are alums) is now torn between giving to a ransom pool or the athletics general fund. For example, Bobcat Club dollars going into the athletics general fund get you three priority points. If the donation is sport specific, it's one point per dollar. Does a donor do that or pay into a ransom pool. From what I'm reading in this thread, most folks are saying you can keep the hostage.
Very good examples, but what you failed to mention is the main component/layer to all of this. REMEMBER - NIL collectives are independent from the colleges and universities (for the time being) - despite the fact that they turn around and feed right into them. Donations (to the university) have long been abled to be earmarked for a specific target area (a general fund, a specific sport, a specific project, etc). But with the introduction of NIL collectives, universities aren't wanting their long-time and/or current donors to stop sending money to the school and instead send it towards the collectives (no, no, no...). They want donors to continue making their contributions AND are now being lobbied/asked (either directly or indirectly) to send additional money to NIL collectives (such as our example of a plea from coach). Make no mistake here - the objective here isn't for you to decide where to send your money, the objective to get you to send more money and to different and separate platforms. Hence my point about the money not being the same. They don't want you to put $1,000 in the right hand (university donations) and then move that $1,000 to the left hand instead (NIL collectives). They want to you put $1,000 into BOTH hands for both parties and platforms to use.