Surveyed UCI campus organizations express difficulties with securing funding
- Camelia Heins
- Mar 31
- 6 min read
Fifty-five percent of UCI Registered Campus Organizations (RCOs) surveyed either disagreed or strongly disagreed that funding is easy and accessible for their organizations, according to a New University survey of UCI RCOs.
New University sent a survey to more than 500 UCI RCOs to understand how organizations feel supported at UCI from Feb. 17 to Feb. 28. The survey received 60 responses from various campus organizations. Student leaders of each organization had the opportunity to share issues their club has faced and respond to statements regarding how supported their organization felt at UCI, how aware they were of available resources and whether they felt recognized for their contributions to the campus community.
Student leaders discussed the difficulty of securing funding for their organizations.
Ayaan Dhir, a fourth-year computer science major and president at Sigma Eta Pi, wrote that he “wish[es] UCI would have more funding related to STEM and entrepreneurship so that organizations such as ours could receive it.”
Morgan Chall, a graduate student and president of the Entertainment and Sports Law Society, discussed the “many hoops to jump through” for an organization to reserve an on-campus room or receive funding.
“Main campus new room reservation and funding requirements make it incredibly challenging, sometime[s] impossible, to host events and use funding we have allocated to our student organization,” she wrote in her survey response. “There are also way too many steps and forms that need to be filled out in advance of the event before being able to receive reimbursement even after the event is approved.”
Zoha Ahmed, a fourth-year English major and president of the Pakistani Student Association, wrote about the difficulty of the reimbursement funding system for RCOs.
“Funding is extremely hard to get, and the process is so tedious we don’t even try,” Ahmed wrote. “Additionally, it’s a reimbursement system, but we don’t have the money to begin with to afford anything.”
Every RCO has the ability to open an Associated Students of UCI (ASUCI) club account, which functions on a reimbursement-based system.
According to Student Government Student Media (SGSM) Financial Analyst Megan Keenan, who manages 475 active club accounts, RCO student leaders “submit a check request to our office and list out the different types of expenses” the organization is requesting a reimbursement for. Depending on whether the organization has enough funds, the request will be approved and a reimbursement check will be ready for pickup within 10 business days, though Keenan said checks are typically processed before then.
There are some cases where organizations can request funds directly rather than a reimbursement, such as a venue expense with enough processing time.
“Maybe it’s like a sports team and they are renting practice space at an off-campus site; sometimes they’re able to request a check in order to pay that fee directly without having to utilize personal funds to get reimbursed for that expense,” Keenan told New University.
All ASUCI club accounts are subject to an annual $30 service fee, and RCOs must make deposits in person at the UPS store at Student Center or the SGSM office. RCOs must also request an updated account balance via email.
“The type of flexibility — the type of turnaround — you know, timelines and access, quick access to the students — and providing that service to them is much faster than they might receive if they were housed under a department,” Keenan said.
Though the ASUCI accounts office doesn’t directly help organizations with fundraising, it can guide clubs to UCI’s Office of Campus Organizations and Volunteer Programs (COVP) for other funding opportunities, such as the Student Programming Funding Board (SPFB) and The Green Initiative Fund.
UCI COVP is responsible for new registration and re-registration of all RCOs every academic year, which opens in the summer. The office provides advising meetings and a variety of resources, including fundraising pathways, acquiring food permits, event planning and affiliating with UCI departments.
SPFB, housed under the ASUCI Office of the President, provides reimbursement funds to RCOs “to promote diverse, innovative and inclusive programming.” The Green Initiative Fund, under the ASUCI Office of the Internal Vice President, funds projects related to aspects of sustainability such as ethics, the environment and the economy.
According to Zara Shams, a third-year informatics and applied and computational mathematics double major and SPFB’s external director, $79,254.31 worth of funding was approved to 34 RCOs so far this year. Last year, 91 clubs applied for funding.
“Our goal is really to let other people know about this resource — [it’s] something very nice, and you can [make] good use of it,” Shams told New University. “We also want to encourage small clubs that just started so they can get funding from us and eventually grow their club.”
SPFB’s process to secure funding includes an application and a funding interview before the board votes in private for final approval. There are specific guidelines regarding what can or cannot be funded for an event.
Some surveyed organizations discussed having to secure funding off campus after running into difficulties with on-campus funding resources.
“We are lucky to have good business partners from around Irvine that allowed us to use their parking space to do so, but in terms of UCI’s help to host [car meet] events on campus, we receive zero help from UCI,” Frank Nguyen, a fourth-year quantitative economics major and vice president of REV at UCI, said.
Alvin Bangyu Li, former president of the Chinese Union at UCI, told New University how his organization relies heavily on corporate sponsors for funding and Irvine city public spaces for gatherings rather than on-campus resources. His organization also utilizes a network of other Chinese Unions at nearby universities to help with funding.
“Due to the decrease in the working efficiency of managers, we have been unable to properly complete activities for many times and have made things difficult for all kinds of unimportant things,” Li wrote in his survey response. “It forces us to spend tens of thousands of dollars on venues and external services every year.”
For room reservations, RCOs have the opportunity to book spaces at UCI’s Student Center, along with other venue types such as outdoor plazas, Ring Mall, classrooms and lecture halls.
For the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the UCI Student Center processed 14,714 RCO bookings, 10,655 UCI department bookings and 737 off-campus bookings across Student Center and Event Services (SCES) venue types, according to Erin Robertson, senior manager of event services.
“So what our board of advisors — because we do have a board of advisors who helps to govern some of the stuff that we do — decided upon several years back was that if it was [an] event for UCI students, it would get priority,” Robertson told New University.
When planning an event through the UCI Eventive portal, RCOs are expected to follow specific lead timesdepending on the event type: at least 12 days for general meetings in the Student Center, classrooms, lecture halls, outdoor tabling or food sales, and at least 30 to 90 days for special events. RCOs are subject to various fees depending on “what space they’re using and then what things are required in order to book that space,” according to Robertson.
“For example, if [an RCO is] booking something inside the Student Center Conference Center, we don’t charge them any room rental.Like, this room — just to use it — costs like $200 for this particular use. We don’t do that. Student orgs don’t pay that, whereas our departments and off campus do,” Robertson told New University.
For SCES venues, RCOs are offered reduced labor fees, which are charged if a room setup needs to be changed, and reduced equipment pricing.
Robertson discussed how many organizations run into issues with booking spaces due to insufficient lead times, as RCOs can usually reserve larger rooms for special events quickly if they re-register in the summer.
“It’s not easy being a student and then trying to plan events on top of everything else they do,” Robertson told New University. “If you have not planned an event before, it can be overwhelming. So, we’d rather they reach out and ask for help and tell us what they don’t know.”
Camelia Heins is a News Intern for the winter 2025 quarter. She can be reached at cheins@uci.edu.
Edited by Karen Wang & Jaheem Conley.
Commentaires