Yalies will not leave student events hungry this year — student groups will have extra funding from the Undergraduate Organization Funding Committee to spend on Claire’s cake, pizza and other refreshments.
The UOFC, a subsidiary of the Yale College Council that distributes funds from the Yale College Student Activities Fee as well as the President’s and Dean’s Offices among student groups, doubled the amount of money that organizations are allowed to spend on food from $50 to $100. The committee has also set up deals with Campus Foods and Yorkside Pizza through which student organizations can get discounts on food to stretch their budgets further, UOFC chair Allen Granzberg ’13 said.
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“We were answering to organizations’ needs for greater funding for food to attract members,” Granzberg said. “I was reading over funding applications and saw that there was a real need for more funding in this respect.”
The UOFC takes applications from student groups and can choose to grant them anywhere up to $600. To prevent organizations from spending the entirety of their finances on food, the UOFC imposes a limit on the portion of the budget that can be allocated for this purpose, but Granzberg said in his two years on the UOFC board he consistently read applications from groups that wanted to spend more than the maximum $50 on snacks to draw students to events.
Providing snacks from popular eateries is one of the best ways to ensure attendance at an event, said Catherine Laporte-Oshiro ’13, president of the Yale Undergraduate Economics Association, adding that she is happy about the changes to UOFC policies.
“Food prices are more volatile than most, and the UOFC’s funding guidelines don’t account for inflation,” she said.
Granzberg said that any extra funding rewarded as a result of the policy changes will not strain the committee because its budget has increased slightly from last year.
In addition to the increased food budget, the UOFC has also reached out to New Haven businesses to discuss discounts on food and other services such as printing and equipment for student groups and events. So far, Yorkside Pizza has decided to offer a special price on bulk orders. Campus Foods, an organization through which students can order from a number of local restaurants, has also agreed on a 15 percent discount for Yale groups. Granzberg said he hopes to announce more partnerships in the coming months.
“I decided to target Campus Foods because there are a lot of restaurants that are involved, so student groups can get discounts at a wide variety of stores, instead of only a couple,” Granzberg said, adding of these deals: “[The UOFC] can fund more groups, and groups can do more with their funds.”
The owners of Campus Foods and Yorkside were not available for comment.
The UOFC distributed over $175,000 total last year.