Club sports campaign for funds
Published April 8, 2008
For the past three years, the Mizzou Club Sports Federation has been working toward fair funding for club sports and is reconstructing the funding process.
Corey Gibson, Missouri Students Association Senate Operations Committee chairman, said MCSF contains mostly students, including five club sports representatives, one MSA member and one Graduate Professional Council member. Club Sports Coordinator Christine Williams is the adviser for MCSF.
Williams said although there is a position available for someone from the GPC, there is currently no representative for the GPC on the MCSF executive committee, although Gibson serves both the MSA and GPC roles.
Williams said the MCSF helps club sports become more involved in competitions.
“The MCSF is comprised of all the sport club student organizations at Mizzou,” Williams said. “Mizzou students organize and operate these organizations with the main purpose of hosting and traveling to competitions with other university and college sport club teams.”
Gibson said MSA decided to separate club sports from other clubs to help the sports receive fair funding.
“Club sports have different funding needs than other clubs because of the traveling, field rental and tournament costs,” Gibson said. “Three years ago we decided to make a separate entity to cater to the needs of club sports.”
Gibson said MCSF makes sure the funding process is fair and effective.
“MCSF wants to ensure that every club sport is benefiting and that the funds are being used efficiently,” Gibson said.
Gibson said the tier system, which is used to determine how much money a club sport receives, has continuously evolved over the past few years.
“We established policies to determine what items, such as traveling, tournaments and equipment, get higher priority according to the tier system, where tier one receives the most funding and so on,” Gibson said.
Williams said there are five tier levels, but tier five includes club sports that are on probation or do not meet the minimum requirements, such as having at least 10 members.
Williams said club sports apply for a tier level every year and based on their tier assignment are given a maximum amount of funding. The club sport can then decide how much money they want to request and how they want to use that money.
Gibson said the tier level for each club sport is determined by many factors.
“The tier level depends on the number of members in the sport, if the sport is part of a nationally recognized organization, if they compete nationally, the number of events they participate in and fundraising,” Gibson said.
Gibson said the nice thing about this system is that the more involved a club sport becomes, the more funding they will be eligible for.
“This system benefits everybody, because it makes the clubs become active in recruiting and holding events in order to receive more funding,” Gibson said. “It allows them to get the funding that they deserve.”
Williams said MCSF’s budget is approximately $190,000, which includes all administrative, insurance and staffing costs in addition to the funding club sports receive.
Williams said recent changes were made during the winter semester 2007.
“The MCSF executive committee and I re-evaluated the structure of our tier system, the commonly requested budgetary needs, our emphasis on fundraising and how all of that would best fit the average amount of funding we receive from the student fee,” Williams said.
Williams said the MCSF has also created a qualifying tournament fund where sports can request more funding for competitions they are invited to.
“MCSF has been able to create a qualifying tournament fund where sport clubs can come apply for additional funding should they qualify for a regional or national tournament that because of the costs, the students either may not have been able to attend or would have had to pay much more out of pocket,” Williams said.
Williams said these changes have made a positive impact over the past year and MCSF is pleased with the outcome.
