Editorial: Bruin Bash allocation should be impetus to secure sponsors
By Editorial Board
Sept. 22, 2013 12:00 a.m.
Last year, corporate sponsors chipped in about $40,000 to subsidize Bruin Bash and the Enormous Activities Fair, two high-profile welcome week events.
This year, the sum is just $5,000 – a staggering drop that should prompt the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s Campus Events Commission and Cultural Affairs Commission to start earlier and work harder to secure outside funds for next year’s events.
To be fair, the $40,000 figure from last year is the highest amount of corporate sponsorship in recent years, according to Roy Champawat, director of the ASUCLA Student Union.
It is understandable that sponsors may not always be as eager as they were last year to reach the college market. But a drop of about $35,000 is not just the result of bad luck or shifting markets, as Cultural Affairs Commissioner Jessica Trumble and Campus Events Commissioner Jessica Kim told the board earlier this week.
College students are just as valuable a demographic as they were last year and markets, if they have shifted, have only gotten more active as the economy has improved.
Last year’s figure should act as a benchmark for USAC, as sponsorship of that size would prevent the council from drawing on surplus funds, which can be used later at the discretion of the council.
For the past two years, UCLA Recreation has assisted in securing corporate sponsorship, so the blame for the shortfall shouldn’t be placed entirely on USAC. That said, as our undergraduate student government, USAC should lead the fundraising efforts for events it puts on.
In the spring, students passed the Bruin Bash fee increase referendum, which will raise about $80,000 annually toward the cost of the concert and activities fair.
The referendum was intended to prevent drawing on surplus funds – an inherently unstable source of funding – and instead achieve financial independence for the events. Whatever costs remain above and beyond the referendum revenue, the council should make every effort to cover with sponsorship.
Only then would the events be truly independent.
On Sept. 10, the council voted to allocate $40,000 to cover the shortfall in corporate sponsorships, drawing on surplus – the same funding source the referendum had hoped to avoid.
While that allocation is lower than the past amounts drawn from surplus (last year’s allocation was $78,000), the goal should be to avoid spending from surplus funding at all.
Bruin Bash and the Enormous Activities Fair are unlike most other campus events in that they attract a large, campus-wide audience, allowing advertisers to engage with many UCLA students at once.
Most of the organizations and programs USAC funds are much less visible, so corporate sponsorship should be emphasized to offset the cost of these events and save money for other, less lucrative, programs.
Trumble and Kim should take the drop in corporate funding as an impetus to put their offices to the task of identifying sponsors early on. Shrugging it off as a consequence of market forces won’t cut it.
