Activities & Organizations News

SFAC: MVP focuses on marketing, promotion

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MVP Assistant Director Emily Johnson and Director Chris Pinto present to the Student Fees Advisory Committee Friday. | Brittaney Penney/The Cougar

The Metropolitan Volunteer Program asked the Student Fees Advisory Committee for $12,932 as a base augmentation Friday to assist during fiscal year 2017.

The base augmentation would be used to aid their on-campus events, volunteer fair and marketing. This amount was asked as one-time requests in fiscal year 2015 and 2016, however, the organization felt this additional funding is needed annually.

“One of our biggest expenses is marketing and promotion,” MVP Assistant Director Emily Johnson said. “Because the vast majority of our events don’t require funding but actually (require) recruiting volunteers and growing our organization requires us to focus on improving our marketing.”

Among their requests were a need for tents. According to MVP, as their events grow in attendance and organizations involved, many complained about the heat.

MVP also requested an increase in budget to support their demand for more resources and supplies for their many events. In 2016, MVP plans to host 44 events where they will need resources ranging in food for their project to feed the homeless at Star of Hope to fleece material for blankets for Houston’s homeless population as part of their project to a retractable banner to place at all campus or tabling events.

Addressed at length was one of the recommendations SFAC provided last year to MVP. SFAC endorsed the idea of establishing more on-campus and off-campus partnerships to assist in MVP’s overall performance throughout the year.

“We’ve also increased the number partnerships and collaborations by partnering with many leading on-campus and off-campus organizations,” Johnson said. “MVP was able to increase and diversify the volunteer opportunities students had on campus…through this expanded programming, events posted by the community saw an increase in turn outs.”

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