Division II has awarded eight grants totaling more than $75,000 from a newly created fund designed to strengthen divisional membership.

The grants to support initiatives ranging from orientation sessions for prospective Division II institutions to exploratory efforts that would bolster membership in areas where membership is thin are the first allocations from the Division II Presidents Council effort to develop Division II as “a membership destination.”

A seven-member selection committee headed by Charles Dunn, former Presidents Council member and president emeritus at Henderson State, met June 12 to review 19 grant proposals totaling more than $550,000 – more than twice the annual allocation for the fund. That required the committee to review requests (ranging from $2,500 to $120,000) carefully to see whether they matched the purpose of the fund.

Since this was the first time institutions were submitting requests to a fund for which the parameters had been only generally defined, Dunn said the selection committee would provide the first examples of the specific initiatives the fund is intended to encourage.

“Being a first effort, our selection committee members were trying to work out in their own minds how each of these proposals would best serve Division II in terms of attracting new members, stabilizing existing membership or making the division stronger as it pertains to the strategic plan,” Dunn said. “We all came into this meeting with that same commitment, to help find ways to make DII stronger. As we reviewed each proposal, we asked ourselves how this would attract new members, stabilize membership or prevent loss.

“It required us to articulate much better what we expect of future applications than what we were prepared to do before this meeting.”

The committee made the following allocations:

• $7,000 to the Great Lakes Valley Conference to conduct a two-day educational orientation on campuses of two prospective conference members (institutions that are currently progressing through the Division II membership process).
• $24,000 to the East Coast Conference for exploratory efforts to expand league membership. The ECC had requested a three-phased approach totaling $63,000, but the selection committee decided to fund the first phase and ask for progress reports before committing to additional steps.
• $4,500 to the Pacific West Conference to help defray travel expenses for a meeting that occurred among conference office personnel and prospective member schools.
• $9,600 to Conference Carolinas for efforts to stabilize current league membership and explore potential new members.
• $10,000 to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference for league personnel to visit potential new member campuses, including Simon Fraser, which is the first Canadian institution to officially apply for Division II membership.
• $2,500 to the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association to fund exploratory visits to potential new members.
• $2,500 to Dixie State College to defray travel expenses for a meeting in which the athletics director presented to schools exploring potential membership in the Pac West.
• $15,000 to the California Collegiate Athletic Association to hold a two-day summit that would address ways to bolster Division II membership in the West region. (The selection committee preliminarily agreed to fund up to the requested amount but asked for a more detailed description of the summit and its attendees.)

The total allocation for the eight grants is $75,100, well below the $180,000 the selection committee had at its disposal (the Presidents Council had agreed earlier to allocate $70,000 from the fund as a one-time incentive for institutions to comply with a new academic-data reporting system, which is why the selection committee did not have the full $250,000 at its disposal this first year).

Dunn noted that the committee is not required to use the entire fund from year to year. Unallocated funds from this round of submissions will roll over to the September application period (at which time $250,000 from the new fiscal year kicks in, bumping the fund to $354,900 for 2009-10).

Proposals not funded during this initial round included support for establishing new sports at various institutions, funding or supporting postseason or regular-season events or upgrading facilities. Selection committee members did not believe those ideas supported the broader purpose of the membership fund as a way to benefit the entire division rather than a more narrow segment.

Dunn praised the new process overall and urged the Division II membership to use the initial allocations as a learning opportunity.

“Some of the proposals were very clearly within the guidelines, whereas others would prompt many more like them in the next round. Not that they were bad plans, but I didn’t see how we could justify those and not 99 more,” Dunn said. “I was pleased with how the committee worked to winnow the pool down to those proposals that really fit the purpose of the fund.

“I would hope that our actions spur conferences and institutions as they look at the outcomes here to be more innovative and truly look for ways to strengthen conferences and schools and attract new Division II members. I believe people should interpret this fund as an opportunity to strengthen Division II.”

Dunn said many of the proposals were “too narrowly defined,” even if they did try to align with one or more of the guidelines. He thought the work the selection committee did in its first meeting should help refine the guidelines. For example, he said, the committee is not interested in funding team travel, helping to upgrade or build campus facilities, helping to sponsor sports, or funding institutional staff travel expenses to meetings – items that would otherwise be considered as part of an institution’s or conference’s general operating budget.

“What we’ve done in this first go-round will send a strong signal to the membership about the kinds of strategic initiatives we intend to fund,” Dunn said.

In addition to deciding the first allocations, committee members also suggested improvements to the submission form that would help conferences and institutions more clearly align requests with the fund’s guidelines. That includes identifying whether the funds requested represent “seed dollars” for ongoing projects or if there is a matching-fund component from the entity making the request.

Allocations from this first round of proposals will be distributed later this summer. September 30 is the next deadline for applications to the membership fund. The selection committee will meet in November to determine allocations from that pool that will be distributed in January.