One of Iowa State’s newest clubs is hoping a little extra cash will help it stay afloat in a sea of student organizations vying for limited Government of the Student Body funding.

On Wednesday night, four local bands will play for an ISU Guitar Club fund-raiser at the Maintenance Shop, including Poison Control Center, Duck and Cover, 8 Miles Out and Mechanistry.

Matthew Jones, president and founder of the Guitar Club, says the club got its start when he was searching for guitar tablature on his computer.

Wanting to learn Smashing Pumpkins tabs, Jones, junior in industrial technology, sifted through the lengthy list of more than 500 ISU student organizations in search of a club for guitarists.

“Being that there are, like, 500 clubs, I knew for sure that there would be a guitar club — but there wasn’t. So I decided to form one,” he says.

“I needed a way to find guitar players that lived near me, so we can network and share our playing experiences.”

There are 250 people on the mailing list, 25 paying members and six members who regularly show up to meetings — Jones translates this to 25 members. During meetings the members get together and play their guitars.

“There for awhile we met every week,” he says. “This was fine for quite some time, being that we all had our own styles that we preferred to play.

“But after a while, you know everyone’s favorite songs and such — which is why we are doing the benefit show, to gain money for professional instructors.”

Now the club meets every other week, Jones says. Though the band is receiving funding from GSB, money is extremely limited this year for student organizations. But funds are necessary for the club to bring in outside instructors.

At meetings, the guitarists break up into three groups — advanced acoustic, electric and beginners, says Corwin Colebrooke, group member and bassist for local band Parallex. Though he’s a bassist, he says he enjoys playing with musicians of different styles. He says a few instructors have already been at the meetings.

“Once it was Bill Lombardo from [local band] Mechanistry,” Colebrooke says. “He also teaches at Keepers Music.”

“We would mainly like to bring in professional, more advanced guitar players,” Jones says. “We are looking to have a variety in the club so we don’t want to just bring in the same one guitarist 15 times during a year.

“We would like to have professionals ranging in emphasis in jazz to rock and everything in between.”

Without instructors, Jones is worried the appeal of joining the club will slowly lose its luster, as it already has with member attendance down since the beginning of the year.

Without funding, the club might become more of a circle of friends playing for each other than a student organization.

“It’s hard for a club that focuses on a one-on-one learning issue like the guitar to have so many people wanting that attention and not receiving it,” Jones says. “When you have 25 people in one room and they all want to play different material, you need a uniting element.”