The Graduation Fund/Profileringsfonds

What is the Graduation Fund (Profileringsfonds)?

The Profileringsfonds is a scheme that offers financial compensation to board members of student organizations. The amount of this grant depends on the number of board scholarship months that an association is granted. Once every three years, depending on the category (Sports, Study, Social, Cultural or other) organizations are reassessed. The recalibration entails that the board then sends a number of documents and overviews from the past three years, more information on this at the "How To" of the Graduation Fund. After the deadline, the CUOS reviews the applications and sends the recommendation to the Board of Trustees for inclusion. When the final decision is made by the University Council, this is communicated by the CUOS again to everyone who applied and the decision is placed on the CUOS website, see the decisions page.

Note: The name of the Graduation Fund has been changed to Student Support Regulation due to a change in the law. Around the summer of 2025 this new name will be put into final use within the UG. We will continue to use the name Graduation Fund until then.

Application for the Graduation fund

The regulations regarding the Graduation fund has been established by the Board of the University (CvB) in order to support students who are confronted with a study delay. Among other things, the Graduation fund deals with the grants for board members. These grants are meant to compensate students who are doing a board year for the study delay they experience due to their board work. CUOS advises the CvB about inclusion of student organisations into the Graduation fund. This means that CUOS establishes procedures and handles requests for inclusion into the Graduation fund. The CvB takes the final decision about whether or not to include a student organisation.

Organisations that are already included in the Graduation fund have to hand in an application for recalibration every three years. Organisations that haven’t been included in the Graduation fund yet can hand in an application for inclusion every year. Are you in doubt whether your organisation would be eligible for inclusion? Contact CUOS via cuos rug.nl.

How to

Applying for inclusion into the Graduation fund doesn’t have to take a lot of time, if you prepare it well. It all starts with form A, which can be found under ‘Compulsory documents’. In this form, some general information about the organisation has to be filled in and several questions have to be answered. Pay attention when filling in this form, because not all questions apply to all organisations. Check which questions apply to your organisation and only fill these in. Furthermore, there is an exact list of documents that have to handed in in order to make the application complete. All documents will be treated separately below. Behind the information, the name under which the document has to be handed in is shown. In these names, you will often find [org] or [year], then you have to fill in the name of the organisation or the year which these documents cover between square brackets.

If there is a need for some guidance in completing the mandatory documents, we recommend reading the guideline below. Through this guideline, CUOS hopes to support organisations as much as possible to complete a successful (re-) evaluation to the Graduation Fund.

Compulsory documents:

Form A:

For a complete application, it is necessary that this form is filled in (only the applicable parts). This documents has to be handed in under the name: “0. Form A [org]”.

Form A - Application form

Up-to-date Articles of Association, authenticated and signed:

This is also pretty clear: in order to hand in an application for an organisation, this organisation needs to have Articles of Association. These Articles have to meet a few conditions. These conditions can be found in Article 4 of Appendix 1 of the Regulations for the Graduation fund, under ‘regulations’. This document has to be handed in under the name: “1. Articles [org]”.

Registration from the Chamber of Commerce:

Besides the articles of association, you also have to send us an abstract of the Chamber of Commerce. We need this document to see if an organisation has full legal competence, which is one of the conditions for inclusion in the Graduation fund. It is also important that all board members are registered at the CoC. This may take a while, so start this process in due time! This document has to be handed in under the name: “2. Abstract CoC [org]”.

The most recent budget of the Organisation:

Another general condition is that an organisation makes a budget for every year. In order to check this we ask from each organisation to send us their most recent budget. This document has to be handed in under the name: “3. Budget [year][org]”.

Approved financial year reports of the last 3 years, including profits and loss and explanation:

Every organisation also has to fulfill the condition to hand in a financial year report for the last 3 financial years. A tip: make the reports and especially the balances clearly readable, for example by adding a table with abbreviations used and their meanings. This document has to be handed in under the name: “4. Financial year report [yeaar][org]”. When handing in multiple documents, please do so under the following names: “4.2 [document][year][org]”.

Approved secretarial/abactial year reports of the last 3 years, including an overview of activities:

Another general condition is the handing in of the Secretarial/Abactial year reports, approved by a General Members Assembly, of the past 3 association years. For every year, we also need an overview of activities. These overviews can be made using form D (under ‘Forms’) and form J. These forms, when filled in, contains all information CUOS needs. Please note that per year report a new Form has to be filled in. Because it can be quite a chore to fill this form in for every activity that was organised over the last 3 years, it’s wise to keep track of this. The overviews are used to assess the workload of the board of an organisation, so it’s important to fill everything in correctly. This document has to be handed in under the name: “5. Secretarial/Abactial year report [year] [org]”. The 3 most recent annual reports must be submitted in accordance with Form J below.

Form J - Secretarial report

Form D: Activities Overview

An overview of all activities that were organised in the past three academic years. To ensure that all information that the CUOS requires is present, and to streamline applications as much as possible, please note that any other format than Form D will not be accepted! Make sure to fill in the form to the best of your ability, and always remember: what is not in there cannot be taken into consideration. This is especially important for events that were planned but ahd to be cancelled at the last minute due to e.g., COVID-19, force majeure, etc. Those events should still be included in the overview and an explanation as to why the evnt did not take place be provided. This document has to be handed in under the name: “6. Activities overview [year] [org]”. Please send in three seperate documents.

Form D - Activities overview

An up-to-date list of all members:

In many cases, organisations need to have a minimum number of members to be eligible for inclusion into the Graduation fund. That is why we would like to receive an up-to-date list of all members, so that we can check how many members an organisation has. This list may be at most 6 months old (Article 4(d), Appendix 1 of the Regulations regarding the Graduation fund), and has to be handed in via a filled-in form L (can be found under ‘Forms’). This document has to be handed in under the name: “7. Membership list [org]”.

Form L - Membership list

Note: Members only count for the evaluation if they are students at the UG or at Hanze UAS. It is therefore essential to hand in up-to-date and correct student numbers! We cannot use the other data due to the privacy legislation. We do need the other data in order to prevent fraud.

If Applicable:

Proof of the amount of paying members:

In case that your organisation has members who pay a membership fee, we would like to receive a proof of the amount of paying members of the application year: the entry ‘contributions’ in the financial year report can be splitted into the different levels of contribution and the number of members who pay that specific amount. We can use this to check how many members actually pay membership feest. This document has to be handed in under the name: “ 8. Proof paying members [org]”.

Proof of the organisation of yearly activities regarding the guarding and advancement of educational quality:

In case that your organisation organises activities for the advancement of the educational quality, we would like to see a proof of this. This can for example be a proof of meetings with the programme director or the faculty board (a proof can be the minutes of those meetings). This documents should be handed in under the name: “9. Proof organisation activities[org]”.

Proof of housing exploitation:

If an organization makes use of a building, we would like a form of proof of exploitation of said building. This can be a rental agreement, proof of purchase or documents of a managing foundation. These documents must be submitted under the name: "10. Proof of exploitation property [org]".

By handing in all documents above completely, the application is complete. The deadline for the application is this year at November 15th at noon. The application can be handed in via cuos.aanvraag rug.nl, please mention the name of the organisation for which you hand in the application.

How do I apply for my own Board grant?

You can apply for your individual Board grant under this link: http://www.rug.nl/studievertraging. The deadline for the application is to be found within the regulations.

PLEASE NOTE: CUOS is NOT responsible for the applications or the disbursement thereof. For questions you can always reach out to the UFC under ufc@rug.nl as they are responsible. More information on the application procedure can be found here.

For the application you need a document in which you state how the Board grant months are divided within your Board. This document needs to be signed by your entire Board. Please find a sample document below:

Sample document division of Board grant months

Students from the Hanzehogeschool may send their application to mrs. E.M. van Olffen (e.m.van.olffen pl.hanze.nl).  

Declaration Board year

If you are doing a Board year in an organisation that is currently inlcuded in the Graduation Fund, you can receive a Board grant. At the end of your Board year you need to upload a document that is signed by your successor to prove that you have successfully completed your Board year. You can use the document below and upload it through the same (UFC) portal where you also apply for the grant.

You can find more information here.