About

The members that make up the Auxiliary Organizations Association (AOA) are the auxiliaries of the 23 campuses in the California State University (CSU) system. Typically these organizations include foundations that manage contracts and grants or gifts to the university, enterprise corporations that run bookstores and food services, associated student organizations and student unions, and sometimes athletic or housing corporations. The CSU system finds that certain functions important to its mission are more effectively accomplished by the use of an auxiliary organization rather than by the campus under the usual state procedures.

These organizations are, for the most part, 501(c)(3) public benefit corporations that provide services to their campuses in various ways, and they have their own governing boards, financial structures, and personnel operations. The auxiliaries are, by nature, hybrids. They are private entities nestled within the framework of a public structure and, as such, they are subject both to California corporate law and to the Education Code and the policies of the CSU and the campus. The auxiliaries enhance the capabilities of their campuses in the areas of property purchase or management, procurement, investment, and business administration, by providing alternatives to public procedures and undertaking entrepreneurial business risk.