We’re now entering the second-half of the academic year and many of you are probably realizing that your programming budgets aren’t taking you as far as they used to. With deep budget cuts affecting universities across the nation, programming and student activities budgets can sometimes be the easiest for administrators to cut. But we still need to create fun, effective and educational programs for students. Below are some strategies that programmers use on my campus to cut costs and still run thousands of successful programs.
Share your resources
Find a department on campus whose mission is similar to your department’s or wants to do a similar program. Instead of running two similar programs why not pool your resources and share the cost. Both departments will benefit from the savings on staff, setup, supplies, etc., but they also get exposure to each other’s audiences. Resources doesn’t just mean money. Your department may have access to things the other doesn’t such as advertising space, contacts and student staff.
Open your space
If your department is fortunate enough to have space to hold a program, why not try reaching out to other departments and offer your space for free if they want to run a program there. They get free event space and you get a free program that will show off your department. For example: on my campus, a student working at our LGBT Resource Center and I teamed up to create LGBTQA bowling. This is an event series where the LGBT center recruits students by having them sign-up for free bowling when they enter the center. They get to offer free bowling to students and we get to have new people experience our space.
Think like a student
Many of us think that it takes a lot to impress a student these days, but there are a lot of simple and inexpensive ways to attract students to an event. Remember when you were an undergrad and all you wanted was a free meal or a chance to relax? The same holds true today. Instead of just giving away free stuff, have students put forth a small amount of effort and engage in your program to get the prize. An example of this might be if a program has info booths or smaller activities, have each area’s staff give participants an event card when finished. If the participants collect 2 or 3 cards, they get the free stuff.
Use what you have
Large campuses might have a leg-up on smaller campuses in this example, but it still works. Our universities are filled with knowledgeable young adults who are practicing in several different fields. Why not try tapping into someone seeking experience for your next event? If you’re running an event about student health, try contacting your campus’s nursing student association or college health professionals to see if they’ll provide student nurses for free health screenings. If your campus has a Physical Therapy or Sports Medicine program, their students may need experience in the field and could give massages or do demonstrations for free or dirt cheap.
These are only a few examples of the many ways we can save money and still run great events for our students. If you’ve got other ideas or comments on mine, please feel free to share them in the comments below.
About Jon Tingley
One of Jon’s suggestions about utilizing resources at your college is an excellent one. I am at a large, multi-campus community college (enrollment 48k), and a highly successful event we organized a couple of years ago was having a campus health fair. Besides bringing in health educators from outside the college, I also contacted the health science programs at another campus where these departments are located and asked for their involvement.
Thus, we had student nurses checking blood pressures, the respiratory technicians administering lung capacity screenings, dental hygiene students had various educational materials on promoting healthy teeth and gums and faculty nurses did some overall health counseling.
Their involvement proved a definite “win win” for all involved. Students received free health screenings, the student practitioners received hands on experience and exposure, and the faculty interacted with the student body as a whole and relayed valuable information. And it basically cost nothing except the cost of gas for volunteers who drove themselves to our campus.
Thus, if you are looking at having free or cheaper programs, take Jon’s advice and tap resources at your college that can provide meaningful experiences for your students. They may be sitting there “right under your noses.” Dr. Earl Paul
I have seen numerous campuses utilize the shared resources concept.
Just the other week a University put on a campus-wide student leadership conference and I was brought in to do the opening and closing keynotes and a couple educational sessions. One half of my fee was paid by the Student Leadership Center and the other half was paid by the Student Government Association.
If you want to create an amazing event and you don’t have the budget, it can’t hurt to ask other organizations to get involved. Other groups that you might contact could include; student activities, Greek, athletes, student life, student affairs, individual campus organizations [ie- Phi Theta Kappa]…and the list goes on. The worse thing they could say is no.
You could even get many different organizations or departments involved for a small amount each and in the end you might create a surprisingly large budget.
Sharing resources is an excellent idea. I have done programs on campuses in the morning for staff development and the afternoon for student leaders. Half of my fee was paid by the HR department and the other half by SGA. I have also done programs where the program was split between two days. On Friday night, I did team building and vision defining with the student government officers and the next day I did leadership training for campus organization leaders. At that school, SGA had a training budget which paid part of the fee and the rest was paid from a general student leadership budget. It was actually the same fund, but two different line items! Neither one could have supported the whole program by themselves.
Consider departments that might not normally get into student programming. I have my degree in Speech with an emphasis in Theatre Arts. I have offered in the past and have done sessions with students in those departments on topics such as using a Speech degree to establish a career and also for Theatre students on different performance options, such as professional speaking and stand-up comedy, since that is my current and former professions. While they might not have a specific budget to bring in speakers, they may be able to find funds for an “honorarium” that can be contributed towards the cost of bringing me to campus.
I would even suggest looking into corporate partners. A couple of years ago, I spoke at a community college in Texas and did several presentations spread throughout the day. In the afternoon, however, they brought in the executives and managers of the local branch of Sitel Corporation for a program on motivation, delegation, and time management. The school and the company split my fee!
One last partnership that I have seen was when I presented at a community college in southeast California. I did leadership training in the afternoon for the students and then delivered a motivational program on pursuing your dreams and achieving your goals in the evening. The evening program was open to the general public. Part of the fee was paid by the Office of Community Relations. One way they promoted the program was to use the fact that I am a Kiwanis member. They publicized the program to the local Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions, and other civic groups and I dedicated part of my talk to the value of serving in the community. I then asked the various groups to stand and invited the attendees to seek them out for more information.