Thirty-two student groups have contacted the Organization Resource Group to created or renew a club this academic year, and Vice Chairwoman Administration Ashley Todd said that number will continue to grow.

“It’s a little too early to tell, but we’ve already been contacted by 32 orgs this year looking to be created, or renewed for this school year,” she said.

Last year 150 groups tried to get off the ground. Todd said that number was the most to ever contact ORG.

Todd said she expects that with the record-breaking size of this year’s freshman class, there will be a huge potential of exceeding the number of requests. Between 50 and 60 groups are actually successful in becoming recognized as an organization.

There are two refusal periods within the ORG creation process. First, many groups fail to even pursue the idea of the group beyond filling out a form. During the initial criteria-producing period, ORG also determines whether there are any other groups with a similar premise, Todd said.

During the second refusal period the managers or creators of the potential group need to create a constitution, find a faculty member to be the group’s advisor and acquire at least 10 group members. Among other rejection criteria, a group can be turned down if its activities pose any kind of liability to its members or MU, Todd said.

For a group to be successful in sticking around for more than one year, Todd said organizations need to stay active and have frequent correspondence with ORG.

ORG is also in the process of launching ORGThink, a new program to improve the efficiency of its student organization database.

“Basically, its ORG’s version of Facebook,” Todd said.

Todd said ORG has been working hard over the summer to potentially put ORGThink to use during the spring semester.

Todd also said it will make ORG a lot more effective, efficient, as well as more social.

“It’s getting hard to determine exact numbers of who are a part of these groups,” she said. “The database is a little out of date and not fully accurate.”

Vice Chairwoman of Finance Armeen Mistry said ORGThink will improve the process of student organizations applying for budgets.
Mistry also said every group has an equal chance to get funding for special events and traveling, as well as booking guest speakers.

“The reason why I wanted to be a part of ORG was that it provides (finances) for the groups,” she said. “(ORG) provide(s) a lot of funding, and it isn’t based on (organization) size.”