GUIDELINES - Important legal/sponsoring guidelines for interdisciplinary projects

1. For who?

2. Hybrid financial structure of MAKE projects

3. Things to know when looking for sponsors

4. Three-party contract templates for sponsors

5. Donation letter for sponsors

6. Specific to IT and software providers

7. Prospects forbidden to contact

8. Useful documents to download

This page is concerning student managers and supervisors of MAKE interdisciplinary projects and provides important legal guidelines to consider when managing an interdisciplinary project funded by public money, especially when it comes to engaging with external partnerships.

The following EPFL services validated this document:

• Student affairs (associations)
• Financial services
• The Research office
• Philanthropy

Before anything else, it is important to understand that MAKE projects have a particular financial structure. These projects are always involving an EPFL laboratory/unit but sometimes they also involve a student association. This associative structure is particularly key when the teams get bigger in order to provide the students with leadership and autonomy.

This hybrid format (academic/associative) is reflected in the financial structure of an interdisciplinary project with two different financial entities:

1. An EPFL fund - under the supervision of the supervising laboratory
2. A bank or postal account - under the supervision of the student association's committee

Each of these funds can be used for different objectives:

1. The EPFL fund can be used for:
   1. Pay for EPFL internal services (professional workshops, reprography etc..)
   2. Pay for consumables in the makerspaces SPOT and SKIL
   3. Pay for the salary of supervisors and pedagogical related supervision
   4. Receive the support of EPFL via the MAKE fund
   5. Receive the support of important sponsors
2. The association's bank (or postal account) can be used for:
   1. Pay for pizzas and beers (or more generally events for team building, recruitment of new students etc..)
   2. Pay for communication related activities - promoting the project via a website for example or any other content used to promote the project
   3. Pay for associative related matters
   4. Receive the support of small sponsors (less than 5'000 CHF)

The general rules to follow before engaging in a partnership with external institutions:

1. Please avoid contacting the sponsors already supporting the MAKE program (therefore indirectly supporting your project)
2. All sponsors must be selected in compliance with the EPFL Global Ethics & Partnership (GEP) Guidelines, ensuring ethical standards, reputational integrity, and alignment with EPFL policies: download_gep_guidelines.pdf
3. Use the existing templates for sponsoring (see next chapters):
   1. There are two versions of the three-party template depending on the sponsorship amount:
      1. Below 5 000 CHF
      2. 5 000 CHF or above (up to 250 000 CHF)
   2. In both cases, the money must be transferred to the EPFL fund
   3. The donation letter to transfer money on the association's bank account

Important: For any amount greater than 5 000 CHF, you must use the three-party template and ensure the money is transferred to the EPFL fund.

This template can be used to settle a partnership between the project (supervising laboratory and student association) and an external entity. It is not intended to be adapted but if modifications are necessary please contact mailto:make@epfl.ch. Once the partnership is signed by the three parties it can be associated to the transfer demand so that the EPFL financial services can validate the transfer without any overhead or VAT.

The general rules:

1. The sponsor must be disinterested from results and Intellectual Property
2. The logo of the sponsor can be displayed on a prototype
3. The general image of the sponsor can be promoted but specific publicity for a specific product is forbidden (no active publicity)
4. Sponsors can be invited for events and meet students
5. This is used only to transfer money on the EPFL fund and cannot be used to transfer money on the student association's bank account.

• download_contrat_de_sponsoring_3parties_0_a_4999_chf.docx
• download_contrat_de_sponsoring_3parties_5k_a_250k_chf.docx
• download_sponsoring_contract_3parties_0_to_4999_chf_english.docx
• download_sponsoring_contract_3parties_5k_to_250k_chf_english.docx

This template can be used to settle a partnership between the project (supervising laboratory and student association) and an external entity. It is not intended to be adapted but if small modifications are necessary please contact mailto:make@epfl.ch.

1. The sponsor must be disinterested from results and Intellectual Property
2. The logo of the sponsor can be displayed on a prototype
3. The general image of the sponsor can be promoted but specific publicity for a specific product is forbidden (no active publicity)
4. Sponsors can be invited for events and meet students
5. This is used only to transfer money on the student association's bank/postal account and cannot be used to transfer money on the EPFL fund.
6. The amount of the financial support cannot be higher than 5'000 CHF

download_donation_letter.docx

For sponsoring related to software, you can use similar sponsoring templates as above but it is important to contact the Software Asset Managers (SAM) at EPFL. They will be able to help you to negotiate with software providers or potentially provide you with the software you need because EPFL might already possess a license you can use.

Email address to contact before discussing with private software providers and to include in every ongoing discussions : sam.dsi@epfl.ch

The MAKE program already receives the support from different prospects. You can see the updated list of prospects that you should not contact here.

As of September 2024, three donations are supporting MAKE and all the interdisciplinary projects:

1. The Domaine de Vilette foundation
2. The Banzil panzer trust
3. The Leister foundation

1. download_contrat_de_sponsoring_3parties_0_a_4999_chf.docx
2. download_contrat_de_sponsoring_3parties_5k_a_250k_chf.docx
3. download_sponsoring_contract_3parties_0_to_4999_chf_english.docx
4. download_sponsoring_contract_3parties_5k_to_250k_chf_english.docx
5. download_donation_letter.docx
6. Contact to include when discussing with software providers: sam.dsi@epfl.ch
7. Flux financier entre compte postal associatif et fond EPFL