Rianna Julian is running for Activities Officer, here are her views on LUU’s fundraising troubles.

Money most certainly does not grow on trees, but it also shouldn’t turn in to a Whomping Willow of a task for smaller societies to be able to access funds for all of their needs. Funding and Sponsorships is the DJ Khaled of my campaign: it is key. Members of societies who’ve applied for funding, ever looked at these tasks and just instantaneously had cartoon question marks popping out of your head? Have you ever been told that you should resubmit your fundraising and grant request with a society who they believe has a similar proposal, but in all honesty couldn’t be further from your own intentions and needs? Same.

I believe that smaller societies and sports societies are marginalised when it comes to both support and funding. Speaking to a representative from Korfball, I was told that due to their sponsorship offer coming from a company that the Union objects to (for fair reason might I add), that they were given no alternative but to not enter a sponsorship contract. In their own words they had to decide between ‘buying new kits, or being able to provide for the society all-year round’, needless to say their hopes of a brand new kit were voided from that point forth. I want to make the Union better equipped when situations like this arise, instead of simply saying ‘No’, we need to give clubs an alternative. We need to curate lists of approved sponsors, have people on hand who know the ins and outs of sponsorship and truly has great advice and suggestions to impart on these societies. The struggle to get sponsorship comes from the fact that they are smaller and less well-known societies, the size of our societies should not determine our significance or wealth. It is the fact that you can find a group of like-minded individuals that is the true greatness of all that the clubs and societies stand for in LUU.

Being on two committees, one departmental and one smaller society I realised that the Treasurer in my departmental society knew a plethora of schemes and fundraising opportunities, whereas our smaller society genuinely had to sift through the entire website to find anything that was remotely helpful to our cause. There is a deep inequality within how the societies are handled and a lot of that comes down to their size, I’m proposing that we implement a far better hand-over scheme, and make it easier to find out about and access fundraising and sponsorships for everyone.

Rianna Julian, running for Activities Officer.

(Image courtesy of Pexels)