The Missouri Students Association passed a bill allocating $5,000 to the Big MO Foundation on Wednesday evening during a special session of senate.
According to the bill, $5,000 will be allocated from the 2012 fiscal year Contingency and Reserve fund to the Big MO Foundation for the purpose of purchasing a new Big MO. Big MO is the drum that is sounded during Missouri football games.
“It’s going to allow MSA to pledge $5,000 next year, but we’re not going to pledge it to (the Big MO Foundation) until they have raised $43,000,” MSA Senate Speaker Jake Sloan said. “Our $5,000 will finish the fundraising needed.”
The bill states that with $48,000 The Big MO Foundation could purchase a new Big MO.
Sloan said that if the foundation does not raise $43,000 of the $48,000 by the end of fiscal year 2012, the MSA budget committee will decide the next step.
“When the budget gets written for fiscal year 2013, if they haven’t raised the money the budget committee will decide whether or not we want to include it in the fiscal year 2013 budget,” he said.
According to a Big MO Foundation pamphlet, the new Big MO will be the world’s largest marching bass drum at nine feet in diameter, four and a half feet wide and stand 12 feet tall.
MSA Operations Chairman Justin Mohn said one of the first donations to the Big MO Foundation was a Student Fee Capital Improvement Committee allocation of $15,000. MSA will be the last to donate.
“We agreed that it might be a good way to give them an incentive to raise money,” Mohn said. “If they’ve got the lump of money from SFCIC and the lump of money from MSA coming, the point was made that the money is a low-hanging fruit. We don’t want to trick them into thinking they’ve got more money than they got.”
The Big MO Foundation has put together a fundraising effort headed by Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, in conjunction with the MU School of Music.
According to the pamphlet there are three levels of donations to the Big MO Foundation: the black donation level at $100 or above, the gold donation level at $1000 or above and the Big MO crew donation level at $2,500 or above. All donation levels will yield the donors name, organization or business name on the side or front of Big MO.
Sloan said MSA has been in talks about sponsoring Big MO.
“It’s something that we have been talking about for a while,” he said. “We didn’t know how to fund it. Originally we wanted to put in a C&R request for this year but our C&R account doesn’t have enough money currently allocated into it due to MUPD and KCOU and other things. We decided that this would be the best course of action. That way, we can pledge some money to them, and hopefully we can help them in their goal of raising the money.”
