The UC Berkeley Cal Corps Public Service Center will request additional funding from the campus administration this Thursday.

The funding request comes as a formal proposal to the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees, a body within the Graduate Assembly. The advisory committee reviews funding proposals regarding the use of student fees and recommends a policy decision to the chancellor.

“This year, we’ve identified that Cal Corps has grown significantly over 15 years,” said Megan Voorhees, director of Cal Corps, “(but) we get the same amount of money (from the campus) as when I started 15 years ago.”

The Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees is made up of campus representatives serving an advisory role to the chancellor. The committee hears proposals from campus programs that request additional funding through student fees.

“Sometimes, there is an increase in student fees,” said Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab. “Sometimes, there is a surplus of what was previously allocated that needs to be reallocated. The committee acts as an advisory to the chancellor on these issues.”

According to Voorhees, money from grants and off-campus sources have funded all of Cal Corps’ growth in recent years. Some university service programs, such as the University of Wisconsin’s Morgridge Center for Public Service, have turned to endowments to support their operations.

“Right now, we get about 50 percent of our funding from campus dollars” said Nancy Mathews, director of the Morgridge Center. “The remainder of that funding comes from interest off of our endowment with some funding from grants for programs.”

Those programs are also seeing growth in the number of students involved in community service through their programs. Mathews said the center anticipated growth of more than 500 students in addition to the more than fourfold growth it has seen in recent years.

Like Cal Corps, the Morgridge Center has pursued grants coming from both private foundations off campus and public sources on campus. The Morgridge Center has pursued grants from the Evjue Foundation, national grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and some University of Wisconsin system grants.

Cal Corps was founded in 1967 as the Community Projects Office and was originally funded entirely by the ASUC. Cal Corps now reports to the campus Office of the Dean of Students and is financed by a combination of campus contributions and outside private sources.

In 2000, the UC Berkeley Service Task Force issued a report to then-chancellor Robert Berdahl calling for increased support for community service and the Cal Corps program on campus. No changes in funding were made on that recommendation.