At a glance
The Chinese Student Association’s Lunar New Year Gala is a large, free campus event celebrating Chinese culture and the Lunar… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2025-2026
- Mini
- Awarded
- $5,000
- Funding partners
-
- Services and Activities Fee (SAF)
- Website & social links
Livly Lion Dance Performance
The Chinese Student Association’s Lunar New Year Gala is a large, free campus event celebrating Chinese culture and the Lunar New Year through games, performances, and community engagement. With the theme “Stronger Together,” the gala emphasizes cultural sustainability by fostering cross-cultural collaboration and highlighting shared traditions across communities. Funding will support the rental of the Kane Hall venue.
The Chinese Student Association's Lunar New Year Gala is an annual event celebrating Chinese culture and the Lunar New Year that is open to and free for all UW students, faculty, and community members. Throughout the 3-and-a-half-hour event, we rent out the entirety of Kane Hall and engage our attendees through a variety of cultural and traditional activities, including a games portion in the first half of the evening and a structured performance section in the second half. As one of the largest cultural RSOs on campus, we pride ourselves on the community and connections we build within our RSO, other RSOs on campus, and community groups off campus in the Greater Seattle Area, and are proud to collaborate with all these stakeholders during our Lunar New Year Gala to bring a culturally relevant and immersive experience to all our event attendees.
Planning for the event has already started since late October, as we work with our 40 strong officer board and 8 committee leads to brainstorm, develop, and execute all aspects of the event, including marketing, finding sponsors, creating decorations and activities, and organizing the performances. Work will continue from today to the day of our event on February 15 as we wrap up brainstorming and move towards production and execution in the Winter Quarter.
Organizing an event of this scale requires significant financial resources, and we hope to work with our sponsors and apply for grants that enable us to ensure that this event continues to remain free for all to come and attend. With the funding from CSF, we hope to cover the costs of renting Kane Hall and paying performer honorariums, which would add up to $5,000 this year.
Having worked with CSF last year to fund our previous edition of the event, we are excited to return this year with an event that further promotes our goal of being culturally sustainable.
We believe that being culturally sustainable should not limit you to only celebrating your own culture, but should also include working together with others and highlighting the similarities between different cultures as well. Thus, with the theme of “Stronger Together” this year, we hope to promote our event as one where everyone can come together to celebrate Lunar New Year, and aim to invite performers and create activities that encourage cross-cultural collaboration and showcase how traditions can resonate across communities.
Ashil Shao
Project lead
- ashao21@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Student
- Years
- 2 year(s) remaining at UW
- Affiliated groups
- Chinese Student Association, Foster School of Business, Geography Department
Sofila Song
Team member
- feiyas@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Student
- Years
- 1 year(s) remaining at UW
- Affiliated groups
- Chinese Student Association, Information School
Request amount and budget
Plans for financial longevity
After CSF funding ends, our project for this year will be pretty much over, but will continue in future years through future editions and iterations of celebrating Lunar New Year. However, we will produce a series of recap posts highlighting the activities, performers, and event overall, and how we were able to celebrate the upcoming Lunar New Year with our community. These posts will not only allow us to commemorate the event, but also showcase and highlight our sponsors and the work that was put into the event and the execution of the event overall.
We will also be creating a reflection document for the event overall to discuss more about the planning and execution process for the event, which can be used by future leaders in the club to expand upon and finetune the production of the event. Any resources used and created this year, such as banners, decorations, and posters, will also be conserved and reused in future years, which will allow us to make the event more sustainable and environmentally friendly as the years go on as well.
The planning for this project starts around late October to early November, where the leadership team for the event is formed and all the officers on the board are divided into one of four committees (Fundraising and Sponsorship, Marketing, Performance, Decor and Activities) to begin the planning and brainstorming process for the event. The rest of Autumn Quarter is used for further planning and brainstorming, as well as preparing anything that might be needed for Winter Quarter. Throughout Autumn Quarter, the project leads are also meeting with various people on campus to apply for and secure funding and grants, as well as booking out the venue, Kane Hall, for the event.
After Winter Break and throughout the six weeks of Winter Quarter leading up to the day of Lunar, everyone begins working on their tasks and preparing and completing everything that is needed for their committee to bring the event to life. The main tasks for each committee are listed below:
Marketing: Creating and developing all marketing materials including social media posts, reels, and physical marketing that will be put out. Development will mainly occur within January, while most of February is dedicated to starting and pushing out the campaign to UW and the Greater Seattle Area.
Performance: Contacting all performers and signing contracts with them all as well as briefing them on all the logistics behind their performance at the event. Contracts will be signed by the end of January, while February will involve sending them all logistics before the day of the event.
Decor and Activities: Ordering and creating all materials needed for the activities at the event and the event decorations. Three groups of officers will meet once a week throughout January and February to create all these materials.
Fundraising and Sponsorship: Securing all sponsorships from outside groups and organizations and planning all tabling and other promotional events. Sponsorship contracts will be signed in early January, and all promotional events will occur in the end of January and February.
Plans for long-term project management
As our Lunar New Year Gala has been held for 59 years, we have a large and detailed archive of everything that has been done in previous years, including all created documents, slides, and graphics for previous editions of the event. We also utilize a system of reflections and hand-off documents at the end of each event and school year that covers what could be changed in future years and outlines what successors need to do and know in their role. These two resources enable us to continually scale and build upon previous knowledge and experience, and serves as an important resource for new leaders to learn more about their role.
Furthermore, our leadership team for this event is unique as we pair returning officers with new officers that just joined the board to lead and manage a committee throughout the planning and execution process. This allows for smoother transitions in later years as new officers can get hands on leadership experience with the event before moving up the ladder, and utilize that experience to fuel continued success for the event in the future.
Problem statement
Our project aims to address sustainability through cultural ideology and issues related to Chinese culture and Lunar New Year. As the largest holiday in Chinese culture and many parts of Asia, Lunar New Year holds significant influence across a variety of cultures and peoples around the world. Thus, through the Lunar New Year Gala, we hope to introduce both traditional and modern forms of Chinese performance and activities to the Seattle community while also bringing people from various backgrounds and cultures together to celebrate the Lunar New Year with us in a safe and open environment.
Every member of our officer board has had their own lived experience growing up Asian in America, and have come to UW from a variety of places around the world, ranging from not only Washington, but also places such as California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, and China as well. Many of our officers also come from a diverse background ethnically, and these experiences have allowed us to think more critically about our place and stance within UW and the Seattle community. Thus, this year, we aim to expand our event to include a greater variety of voices within our activities and performances, and are excited to share these perspectives and cultural nuances with the community in the next edition of our Lunar New Year Gala.
Problem context
Our project fits into the existing UW ecosystem since our event is one of many flagship cultural events and projects organized and hosted by cultural RSOs at UW. We, as CSA, as well as other cultural RSOs on campus all maintain the goal of creating an environment and community where people are not only able to learn more about various cultures around the world, but also celebrate these cultures together with others in the community.
The Lunar New Year Gala will compliment existing initiatives for increased collective action due to the collaborations we have with other cultural RSOs and community groups at our event. All the performers at the event are always community members from groups and organizations within UW and Seattle, allowing us to showcase and highlight these groups and bring them to the forefront of cultural celebrations and appreciation within UW. We also work closely with local restaurants and groups throughout our sponsorship, fundraising, and marketing process, enabling us to bring together a diverse set of peoples and groups from both within and outside of UW for our event and to support the expression and celebration of various cultures present in UW and around the world.
Measure the impacts
| Impact / goal | Metric(s) of success | UW stakeholders impacted |
|---|---|---|
| Educate UW students and the Greater Seattle Area about Chinese culture and traditions during Lunar New Year | Attract over 1000 people to the event | Undergraduate, Graduate, Alumni, Academic staff, Admin staff |
| Foster a culturally diverse and safe environment | Invite 2 new and diverse performers to perform at the event | Undergraduate, Graduate, Alumni, Academic staff, Admin staff |
Communication tactics and tools
Our key communication tactics revolve around our marketing plan and campaign that will start in the beginning of Winter Quarter. This includes posts and reels on our social media channels to engage our audience and spread the word online to make people more aware of and interested in our event. This will be followed up with physical flyers being put up around campus, the Ave, and the Chinatown International District, where we will partner with various restaurants and businesses to advertise and promote our event to a wider audience within the Greater Seattle Area.
We also will be purchasing and putting up lawn signs in various locations around campus to catch the attention of students and tourists walking around campus, which has seen high levels of success in the past to increase the awareness of the event and encourage more attendees to show up day of. Furthermore, we will also be tabling in Red Square from the start of Winter Quarter to the day of Lunar, and will be promoting the event to anyone who comes up to our table. This will allow for a more personal connection to be made as our officers will be there to answer any questions regarding the event as well as market and communicate directly to potential attendees face to face.
Outreach communication plan
Our outreach plan for this event includes an intensive marketing and promotional campaign that will target not only UW community members but also friends, family, and people living within the Greater Seattle Area. We will film around five promotional reels, hang up posters and flyers, and post on our social media channels to showcase and highlight the cultural significance and impact of Lunar New Year in Chinese culture. Through our communications, we hope that all our stakeholders will benefit from learning more about Chinese culture as well as the importance of learning more about and celebrating various cultures.
Student involvement
Our project focuses heavily on student professional development and mentorship, as the entire project is managed and executed by current CSA officers, and is structured in a way where returning and new officers can gain relevant and professional leadership experience that can help them in their professional career or in future positions in the club. Furthermore, with the system where new officers are paired with returning officers to lead committees, they can be mentored by the returning officer and receive the support from both the returning officer and the project lead throughout the process to hone and develop their leadership skills.