With the start of the new school year, student organizations around campus have begun fundraising in preparation for their upcoming events. 

The Student Organization Finance Office recently revamped its system with a pilot program to streamline and digitize the process of retrieving funds from an organization’s account. Most NU clubs house their funds in SOFO, which acts as a central bank for student organizations. 

The new program was first launched last spring by the Office of Financial Operations, Student Activities and Organizations and the Associated Student Government, involving eight student organizations to test it. 

Tim Holbrook, executive director for finance administration for the Division of Student Affairs,  said the program was created with the intention of saving student leaders time. 

“Every improvement should be an effort to save time for student organization leaders so that they’re not spending it trying to track people down for signatures or having to walk to Norris for basic transactional pieces,” Holbrook said. 

Previously, if students wanted to retrieve funds from their organization’s SOFO account, they had to compile a list of physical documents and present it to the SOFO window, located on the first floor of Norris University Center. 

These documents include voucher books that organizations use to keep track of expenses and reimbursements, original copies of receipts and W-9 tax forms and invoices. 

Weinburg junior Caleb Shim, finance chair of the Korean American Student Association and student supervisor at SOFO, said it was tedious to collect such documents.  

“There’s a lot of running around basically getting receipts, signatures and everything just to submit it to the SOFO window,” Shim said. 

McCormick sophomore John Tirpak, treasurer of the NU Sailing Team, said the entire process was time-consuming, as students had to go through many checkpoints to access the money in their accounts.  

Last spring’s pilot program aimed to digitize and streamline this entire process.

Students could interface with an online website where they filled out expense reports and payment requests. The new website allowed students to scan required documents and upload them, which the SOFO staff then reviewed and approved. 

“It makes the process a lot faster where if they’re trying to reimburse themselves, they can get a direct deposit back the day of,” Shim said. 

Holbrook said he prioritized reimbursement in the pilot, aiming to shorten the timeline students could be reimbursed after making personal expenses for a club.  

In addition to retrieving funding through ASG and SOFO, many student organizations rely on external funding sources such as grants, alumni donations and self-fundraising. 

McCormick sophomore Ethan Flood, business lead for the NU Solar Car Team, said his organization is primarily funded through grants and sponsorships. They also participate in a fundraiser called the Catalyzer through NU every spring.

NUST has a similar funding structure. Aside from its SOFO account, the team primarily relies on alumni donations housed in a gift account through the Club Sports department at Northwestern, as well as team dues. 

If a student is unable to afford these fees, the Student Activities Assistance Fund (SAAF) helps support the student’s personal expenses.

Tirpak said NUST has relied more on alumni funding this year as a result of scaling back their dues.

“We’re trying to really just make it as equitable and open to all people as possible,” he said. 

Many clubs have gotten creative with their funding, often by holding their own fundraisers around campus. 

KASA works to help run the concessions tent at football and basketball games. Other clubs, such as NUST, hold annual fundraiser events organized by the team. Just last month, the team hosted “Pie-A-Sailor” by The Rock, where passersby could pay to pie a team member of their choosing in the face. 

Even as clubs continue to find new ways to raise money, Holbrook is optimistic about the changes the new SOFO program will bring to club funding as a whole. 

“We’re genuinely excited about these changes and appreciative of the sort of confluence of events, which was that it was something that was in obvious need of investment,” Holbrook said.“It’s nice to see all those things coming together.” 

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