USAC currently lining up performers, sponsors for “˜Concerts for Cash’
By Sarah Jo
March 3, 2008 9:33 p.m.
“Concerts for Cash” is currently in the works as organizers are revising sponsorship packets and searching for third-party sponsors and big-name music performers to perform in May.
Gabe Rose, president of Undergraduate Students Association Council, originally proposed “Concerts for Cash” during last year’s election in an effort to create a major funding source for student programming. Ticket revenue profits made from the concert will provide the extra funding.
Codirectors Lauren Klein and Amanda York said their staff in the president’s office is making strides in its effort to make Rose’s vision of a large-scale concert at Pauley Pavilion a reality.
Klein and York both said the committee has not signed contracts with a particular performer or promoter, but is currently in negotiations and preliminary dialogue with established contacts in the music industry.
York said the concert will be held in Pauley Pavilion in late May.
York added that the committee decided to choose a social or student-oriented theme to promote each year, and this year’s theme will be greater awareness of illegal music downloading.
“We felt that illegal downloading has been ill-communicated on campus,” York said. “There is not much of an awareness of this huge problem.”
In order to fund the concert, the president’s office was allocated $80,000 by USAC in January.
The total cost for the “Concerts for Cash” will be approximately $350,000, according to the preliminary budget York and Klein presented to council.
York said an additional $1,500 was later added to the budget for insurance.
In addition, York said the current budget may change with the financial assistance of a third party who expressed interest in paying the potential difference of expenditures and income needed to meet the total cost. Future negotiations with this third party are still to be finalized.
Klein said the committee has been revising sponsorship packets to get external resources and funding from local and major corporations.
York said the committee has made the packet’s language and the concert’s purpose more clear and concise.
Both Klein and York said they feel their concert’s goals are worth the work.
“It is unique in a sense, a concert for anti-piracy,” York said. “We think this concert is a perfect avenue to market anti-piracy to a core audience of college students.”
