Collegiate Funding

[MaddMatt05]

I am an officer of a club at a relatively large state college. Last year we received about $600 in funding from the school. Everything else we spent we had to raise ourselves. Most of our school funding goes to replacing club equipment and the USFA fee. I would like to know how other school clubs in similar positions are funded. We raise the majority of our money through tournaments and club dues. How do most other school clubs go about funding themselves?

[aamct2]

Our club gets a little bit of funding from the school government, though not much usually. Club dues, fundraisers, and tournaments tend to raise most of the rest of the money. We're looking at trying out a kids program next Fall, which might raise more money more easily. Once in a long while we also get lucky and receive a donation.

~aamct2

[noodle]

most every collegiate club is funded in a similar manner to how you are. they do the same thing that you're doing, except they're doing it better. raising more funds via club dues and fundraisers.

[griffindm]

Look for alternatives to supplement your current funding. Is your current funding SGA-based? If not, seek money there. Does your campus recreation service department support club sports (i.e. clubs that compete intercollegiately)? If so, seek funding there. Did your school have a prior varsity fencing program? If so, solicit help from the alumni of that program via an alumni meet.

Service opportunities also present themselves. Even the Penn State team helps clean up the stadium after football games to raise extra funding. Look for similar opportunities at your school.

[emagdnim]

its really all about the dues, we get our chump change from the college but then usually pull in around 2500 in dues

[Aestro]

My first two years we got $1500, but after that our old Rec director left, and the series of new ones left a lot more of it in the hands of a council of a few of the club presidents. Naturally, this resulted in a drastically reduced budget, down to about what yours is, so we had to raise dues and tournament costs. It ended up working out alright in the short run, though I don't know how it will be long-term when trying to lure in new members. It also didn't help that when the old director left, we had to throw out all members which were not students or faculty, which naturally reduced our dues.

[LordShout]

My uni has contractdicting requirements, they say we're supposed to provide services to the community as part of being a club but then they don't allow community members to use our facilities. However if you bring this to the right persons attention you can usually get passes for a few outside individuals to come in with yall.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by Aestro

the series of new ones left a lot more of it in the hands of a council of a few of the club presidents. Naturally, this resulted in a drastically reduced budget

Have you considered getting a member elected to the council?

-B

[Aestro]

Originally Posted by oiuyt

Have you considered getting a member elected to the council?

-B

I have left since then, but at the time we were at a bad time in terms of experienced fencers - I was actually serving as President and Instructor at the same time, which is already quite time-consuming. We had lost a number of experienced members, and the younger crowd weren't quite ready yet. I didn't really have the time to be constantly dealing with stupid University politics while trying to earn a degree and keep the club running long enough to get the next group ready to take over.

Plus it can be difficult getting in on the council when the larger clubs like soccer, lacrosse, and rugby are all running for it, and they didn't really seem to understand exactly how equipment-intensive of a sport it is. I made the mistake of submitting a realistic budget to them, instead of horribly over-inflating it so that when we lose most of it, we still had some cash left.

For Matt, I would suggest whenever the budget is decided next time, take in a complete set of equipment that a fencer would need to be tournament-ready in all three weapons. If you can actually demonstrate to them exactly what is REQUIRED to compete in tournaments, you might get a little more sympathy.

[mrbiggs]

We get a decent amount of money and then have dues.

We haven't had a fund raiser the last few years but apparently that's unusual.

[Wafath]

A few comments:

Frankly, funding through SGA is a game. You need to learn how to play the game for your school. This means a) networking with other clubs in your school to find out what works and what doesn't (keeping in mind that most see this as a zero-sum game, so some of them may think giving you good advice will only hurt them.), b) talking with the people who make decisions every year to find out what they are looking for, and c) developing a knowledge base in your club that goes back several years so you know what "tricks" are needed to make a good bid.

Additionally, you must come to accept that funding will be a hit-or-miss some years. You need to develop a long term strategy to stabilize your budget.

- If you can, develop a long term plan on what competitions you go to. Depending on where you are and what conference(s) you belong to, you may be able to roughly estimate how much you will need to spend on travel & entry fees several years in advance.

- You should also be able to estimate how much you need to spend on gear for maintenance... the amount you need to keep your gear at the same levels.

The above two, plus required fees, dues, etc. is how much you must spend each year. In theory, this is the exact sort of well-documented expenses that the SGA & other semi-public sources of funds is looking to cover. In practice you want to be able stabilize your costs with other sources of income, like dues, fund-raisers, etc.

Since you can assume a boom-bust cycle with SGA funding, use boom years to get big-ticket items, like complete strips, additional sets of electric gear, etc.

Finally, don't forget that you have a known way to smooth out bumps in funding: pass on the costs to the students. It may not be what you want, but if they really want to do this fencing thing they will find the money.

W

[Aestro]

Originally Posted by Wafath

A few comments:

Finally, don't forget that you have a known way to smooth out bumps in funding: pass on the costs to the students. It may not be what you want, but if they really want to do this fencing thing they will find the money.

W

This is a big one that we made the mistake of ignoring for a while. Our dues were ridiculously low ($25 per semester, I believe), and while it is normally difficult to get people to vote for themselves to pay more, we all realized that this was far below most other clubs which had smaller armouries and provided far less gear. We bumped it up to $35 per semester one year, then $50 the next. While that is doubling the cost, it's also such a small increase that it didn't really effect membership at all - if someone wants to pay $25 to fence, they'll pay $50. It makes a huge difference in terms of funding since that's double the dues from every single member, which led to an additional grand or so per year. Things like that also look good when requesting more money from the school, since you've put up more on your end.

[ACrimsonRapier]

Hm . . . I think our school gives us about 4k, and says we have to buy from 'approved' vendors who charge quite a bit extra. I don't think it'd be difficult to have one of the better fencing suppliers as an approved vendor, but our club president was rather lazy this year and we ended up paying about $200 extra for reels.

Anywho, the other 3200 that wasn't spent on reels went to paying coaches and renting our gym for a day for one of the bigger tournaments--Linkmeyer. That's definitely where we make the money for the club. We had 282 fencers, each paying $30. Plus shirt sales and such.

I guess my point is . . . try starting a huge tournament? =\

Also, because very few people actually pay dues in our club, I was thinking about a way to get people to pay and not be scared off by the idea of having to pay an initial $50. Maybe break it up into pieces over the semester? Like, since most people are going to drop out after a certain number of weeks, maybe request 10 up front, 20 after so many weeks, and another 20 after so many weeks. Just a thought.

[FreshPrinceofEWU]

I'm kind of in the same boat with the money situation for my club. We're a fairly large state school but our club only has six or seven people. I just joined this quarter so i'm kind of the low man on the totem pole but I seem to be the only one with big ideas. We are supposed to get $300 from the school a year for funding but I don't think that they understand how much equipment costs. We're trying to think of some fund raising ideas so that we can get some electric weapons since all we have are dry weapons. It's just difficult when no one really knows about your sport. I've got some good ideas from this thread though, so thanks!

[Wafath]

One way we spread out the costs is by charging fees to students who participate in events. Even if we can get the school to pay for entry fees, we charge the students a nominal fee to offset travel costs.

This way the students who get the most benefit from the club pays the most for the club.

W

[Tomas N]

There are lots of different ways to get $ from the student government. We have a budget every year in which we ask for money for travel and miscellaneous expenses. We usually get around $600. We also can submit requests to the "surplus fund" for equipment purchases. At least right now, the surplus fund seems wildly overfunded by the college, and the student governement approves all sorts of purchases. Since our club is pretty organized with a good record of membership, we usually can get another $1000 from the surplus fund if we really need it.

Tomas

[gorgie101]

Originally Posted by griffindm

Look for alternatives to supplement your current funding. Is your current funding SGA-based? If not, seek money there. Does your campus recreation service department support club sports (i.e. clubs that compete intercollegiately)? If so, seek funding there. Did your school have a prior varsity fencing program? If so, solicit help from the alumni of that program via an alumni meet.

Service opportunities also present themselves. Even the Penn State team helps clean up the stadium after football games to raise extra funding. Look for similar opportunities at your school.

All of the above are great ideas. Sometimes you can't get funding from both SGA and the Rec Programs. At least that is the rule at our school. So we get our funding from the rec center.

We currently get about $2000 from our rec sports program. The rest we raise ourselves. It is hard to get the money though. We have to make sure paper work is filed for trips and tournaments. And they want to see ALL of our financial info, down to the last dime. This past year we raised about $4000 on our own. We even had a bake sale one year. We are looking to the Alumni for extra funding this year. Our club is at a Big Twelve school. Hope that helps.

[gorgie101]

Originally Posted by Aestro

For Matt, I would suggest whenever the budget is decided next time, take in a complete set of equipment that a fencer would need to be tournament-ready in all three weapons. If you can actually demonstrate to them exactly what is REQUIRED to compete in tournaments, you might get a little more sympathy.

We did this one year. We took in a new personally owned set of equipment and then a really old holey not usable set of equipment and some broken blades. We stressed the importance of having SAFE equipment and that older equipment is more apt to fail etc.. We really milked it; and as a result we got a $300 increase that year.

[whiteandbluefencer]

I liked how more than one of the responses above pointed out that a college club can get money from many different places, including different sources within the student government such as was pointed out by Tomas N. Since each college system probably works a little differently, all I can say is that you must be up to date with the policies and procedures of your student government. Knowing how to "work the system" is essential! Where does money for a club like ours come from? What can we purchase/use the money for? Is there more than one source? And if we wish to attempt fundraising to supplement our budget, what is the college's policies about such activities?

Then, when it comes down to specific situations, you'll need to know how to target arguments geared toward a non-fencing, not necessarily friendly audience. I usually focus on showing that any funds they give us will improve safety (replacing 20 year old masks with brand new ones), be more inclusive to the larger student body (more sizes or equipment geared towards a specific group like chest protectors), and also help to get the college's name out there (hosting and attending tournaments). Shy away from fencing lingo and always prepare before going into any meeting where you'll have to defend your requests orally. If you look like you know what you're doing (be confident), they'll trust that they're not throwing their money away on an unworthy cause.

[Cardinalred]

In having no member dues, we're always looking for ways of bringing in much needed money. The other side of the coin however, is that any tournament we compete in, each competing member pays for our of their own pockets. Most entry fees are a manageable $15-$30 range, and we carpool to events to help spread the cost of gas fairly and keep those costs down as well. Am I reading right that other clubs are paying such things from club funds?