Planning a Green Fund Campaign

The key steps to planning a successful campaign are:

  • Build campus partners
  • Choose your audience
  • Make sure the price is right for your campus
  • Tie the campaign to key issues
  • Create selling points
  • Evaluate possible challenges
  • Define method for evaluating success

BUILD CAMPUS PARTNERS

  • Co-sponsors and Allies: Find campus groups, departments, faculty and staff, and officials who will publicly support the referendum.
  • Grant project approval: Certain campus departments will eventually have to approve grant projects (Physical Plant, Office of Sustainability, Capital Projects)
  • Will they be on board if this passes? (They may have to supervise projects.)

THE PRICE IS RIGHT: IS IT? FIT YOUR CAMPUS

  • Research your university’s current financial state. Are you a public university and your budget tied to the state budget? Are you private and tied to endowment? Not all campuses will have the same green fee price.
  • Research students’ current financial situations and willingness to pay for new services. If passed, the green fund should not be a "financial hardship" for students.
  • Would anyone be willing to match the students' fees? See if your college President, a campus department, alumni, or a corporate donor would match the students' fees, allowing you to lessen the fee amount.

SELLING POINTS (SCPB)

Saves

  • Valuable natural resources
  • $$$ on campus utility and purchasing bills

Creates

  • Student jobs
  • Valuable leadership experience and green job skills for students

Promotes

  • Collaboration and communication amongst students, faculty, and staff sustainable behavior

Benefits

  • Campus groups, local businesses, and neighborhoods involved in implementation

KEY ISSUES

  • To what issues do students give their support?
  • Are those issues going to be eligible for grants through this fund? If yes, then make sure these are the issues being publicized with this referendum.

STUDENT-DRIVEN CAMPAIGN

  • Write a referendum
  • Get the referendum on the elections ballot
  • Publicize the voting dates and educate the campus about the referendum
  • Student body votes YES or NO (Referendum needs majority vote)
  • Referendum must also receive institutional approval to be officially implemented

GETTING A REFERENDUM ON THE BALLOT

Connect with the campus elections office and the student government

  • Find out when annual elections occur
  • How can you get a referendum on a ballot? Do you need signatures?
  • Many universities only allow campaigning during certain weeks

Learn the rule book and get creative!

PUBLICIZE THE BRAND

Connect with the campus elections office and the student government

  • Choose a catchy title and tagline
  • Invest in a logo. Use colors that stand out.
  • Publicize the brand at large events
  • Put the logo on stickers, decals, posters, banners

RESULTS

Referendum does NOT pass. Evaluate results:

  • How close was the vote?
  • Can you determine how your different audiences voted?
  • Publicize the brand at large events
  • Was there enough publicity and education? Are people not ready?

GREEN FUND INFRASTRUCTURE

Referendum DOES pass. Next steps: What do you need for a successful green fund?

  • A decision-making body
  • A paid staff member/coordinator
  • Publicity and community outreach
  • Website and marketing tools
  • Grant applications
  • Archives

GRANT COORDINATOR

(You can have the Coordinator be full time with the fund or split with another department.)

  • Acts as the face of the committee
  • Coordinates speaking at meetings and community outreach
  • Meets with project applicants and grantees
  • Runs trainings for committee members and new grantees
  • Project Management
  • Tracks the progress of grantees
  • Manages the books and other administrative tasks
  • Formulates and executes strategic initiatives for publicity
  • Provides institutional memory

GRANT APPLICATIONS

  • Abstract Submissions: These allow a committee to screen projects and ask the applicants questions or to make changes before the final applications are due.
  • Project Approvals: Projects need approvals from various campus entities
  • Metrics: Must be able to measure costs and benefits of a project- quantitative and/or qualitative metrics are required.

ARCHIVES

  • A preserve institutional knowledge and fund activity
  • Archive all applications, both awarded and non-selected
  • Archive all budget activity. Archives allow for the transparency of a fund and assist with the publication of the annual reports
  • Archive all decisions made by grant-making committee, especially amendments to the bylaws. Once a decision has been made, the coordinator can reference the archives, rather than keep asking the committee