Each year for the annual Battle of the Valleys competition, Grand Valley State University and Saginaw Valley State University face off on two fronts: football and fundraising. Historically, GVSU has almost always had the upper hand at football, while SVSU has dominated fundraising for the past eight years.

Last year while GVSU raised $12,031, SVSU more than doubled that with $24,540. While SVSU chooses to donate to different charities each year, GVSU decided to start its own fund called the Laker Children’s Fund.

The Laker Children’s Fund allows for multiple organizations around Kent and Ottawa counties to apply for mini-grants from the fund. The fund is open to all nonprofit organizations that work with children or promotes education.

Ella Fritzemeier, GVSU student senate president, said the fund was created so they could create consistency.

“2013 (was) when they decided ‘OK, we want a centralized nonprofit or fund that everybody knows,’” she said. “(Instead) of every year picking a new charity and nobody ever knows the charity, they created this so it was a more centralized cause for everybody to get behind.”

However, she said there was no process left behind on how to handle the funds, so student senate has been working on re-vamping the fund over the past few years.

Sean O’Melia, executive vice president of student senate, has worked closely with the Laker Children’s Fund both this year and last year and said things have gotten more clear in terms of how the fund works.

“Before last year, it wasn’t clear at all and last year we definitely made it clear (and) there are ways to go about it,” he said. “Now, its growing from our first actual foundations and making it into something that’s the most efficient system that we could possibly have.”

This year, instead of having only student senate and Laker Traditions spearhead the event, they tried to get more departments all around the university involved. This included Spotlight Productions, Greek life, Residence Housing Association, Future Alumni Association and more.

Dan Ziegenfelder, Laker Traditions programming chair, said getting more departments involved will hopefully expand on the amount of people who donate and hear about the fund.

He is working with the promotions of the events for the entirety of the week and is helping run the Laker Children’s Fund. Ziegenfelder, along with Rachel Travis, vice president of the finance committee for student senate, head up the fund and work with the nonprofit organizations and determining who will receive money and how much.

“So they can apply (then) after that we’ll reach out to them and set up an interview with them,” Ziegenfelder said. “Then at the interview we’ll go over who they are, they’ll give a presentation of what they do and what they’re trying to get money for just so we have an understanding of what this money will be doing.”

Although the concept of the Laker Children’s Fund has been around for almost four years, it doesn’t seem as though the Laker community has fully grasped the concept of it.

Commonly, people think GVSU would have an easier time raising money since student enrollment is almost three times larger than SVSU. Fritzemeier, however, said this could work against raising funds.

“(SVSU has) a smaller campus, so its easier to get people more focused on one certain cause and their student government has an entire committee for Battle of the Valleys, so they dedicate a lot more people to the cause to plan it,” she said. “We have 25,000 students who all have so many different things they are trying to do so there are a lot of confounding efforts already.”

Although GVSU has consistently been out-fundraised in the past, O’Melia remains hopeful about changing that pattern in the future.

“If we want to ever make a change in how we do in the fundraising competition every year that we have to act upon it and not just complain that we are consistently not doing well,” he said. “It’s easy to sit back and say that we aren’t doing enough (and) just even donating $5 or $10 helps a lot and then for faculty and staff its important for them to support the students.”

Ziegenfelder said GVSU doesn’t set a monetary goal each year, the goal is just to improve from previous years and to raise as much money as possible. And, of course, beat SVSU.