Lauren RabainoAttention Cal Poly clubs: Associated Students Inc. is giving you money, a lot of money.
The ASI Board of Directors has $75,000 to give to qualifying clubs on campus through the improved Club Funding program.
More money has been made available to clubs this year to help encourage the formation of new clubs and to help maintain the older, established clubs.
The Club Funding program is “available to enhance the cultural, educational, social and recreational opportunities for all Cal Poly students,” according to Club Funding procedures.
The program is funded through mandatory student fees. Each quarter students pay about $200 in University Union and ASI fees. These fees pay for the mortgage on the UU, ASI events, staff salaries, the ASI Children’s Center and the Club Funding program, said Tony Guntermann, ASI chair of the board.
There are three branches of the Club Funding program: club sponsorship, club event co-sponsorship and sports club funding.
Clubs are only allowed to apply for one form of available funding.
Under club sponsorship, clubs can apply for a $500 check to use however they wish. The $500 is meant to help new clubs get organized and attract members. Club sponsorship is for clubs that do not qualify for other sources of funding.
“We figured the $500 would really help out a lot of clubs. It could help them buy pizza for their meetings so they can have members show up, or buy flyers and make paper copies,” Guntermann said.
To put on large-scale events, clubs can apply for up to $2,000 from the club event co-sponsorship fund. However, to receive this money, clubs have to be able to match the amount.
“We are pretty excited about it because we are giving away free money. What happened last year was that a lot of clubs didn’t use the money,” said Guntermann. “We have $75,000 allocated to give out. A lot of the smaller clubs weren’t receiving the co-sponsorship funding because they didn’t have $2,000 to front to get the matching funds.”
If a club wishes to put on a $4,000 event, the club fronts $2,000 and ASI matches that amount. Instead of using their allotted amount on just one event, clubs can have ASI match their funds for multiple small-scale events.
For a club’s event to qualify for matching funding, the event has to be registered by going through the application process.
“At the end of the year, we put on the architecture show for the fifth-year students. The Club Funding program allows us to put in the money we have saved up for events of this matter. Since we are a club within ASI, we only have to put in half of the money and ASI puts in the other half . We see it as a very beneficial program,” said Luis Esquivel, a member of the professional architecture fraternity Alpha Rho Chi.
Sports clubs can apply for up to $4,000 during the year through the Club funding program, Guntermann said.
Club Funding applications are available through the ASI Web site.