Student organizations’ funding requests will exceed this year’s estimated budget, the Student Activities Finance Committee co-chairs said at the Associated Student Government meeting Wednesday.
The co-chairs’ presentation comes before the quarterly New Student Organization Support Fund Senate meeting, which will take place May 13. There, the Senate will allocate either $15,000 or roughly $18,000 to registered student organizations less than two years old.
The annual SAFC appeals “Funding Senate” for all groups takes place May 27. Clubs will be able to request money from a pool of either $60,000 or roughly $63,000 this year to secure additional funding on top of their regular SAFC allocations.
SAFC, a committee within ASG, allocates funds to student organizations every Spring Quarter.
This year, SAFC will allocate about $2.8 million from the Student Activity Fee. The University will provide about $700,000 for Mayfest Productions, Northwestern University Dance Marathon and A&O Productions. Combined with excess SAFC funds not used in previous years, student organizations will receive around $4 million this year.
Senators on the Board of Financial Review evaluate SAFC funding proposals. Weinberg sophomore Aidan Keefe and Communication sophomore Serena Song serve as SAFC co-chairs.
The two said during Wednesday’s meeting that 53 more eligible student organizations applied for funding — and they applied for about $840,000 more in total lower bounds — than last year.
“We just really hope that we can all understand that even one dollar carries immense weight here,” Song said.
Keefe said he hopes that club representatives from student organizations will remain cordial, as he has received angry emails and passionate comments at previous Funding Senate meetings.
He said the allocation process involved meeting with groups that requested help with applications and assigning priority numbers to organizations’ funding applications based on quality. After that, the committee interviewed groups with lower priority numbers and those comprising a larger share of the budget to get more information. The committee deliberates on unallowable expenses, evaluates events individually, looks at groups holistically and cuts based on priority numbers.
According to Keefe and Song, appeals are evaluated based on several criteria, such as necessity, sources of other funding and due diligence in calculating costs, among others.
“We don’t just say ‘Well, because a group has a lot of members, they should get a lot of money, and they should get proportionately more money than a group with less members,’” Keefe said. “I think the emphasis here is breadth and depth.”
ASG committee members also spoke to senators about the importance of diversity and inclusion considerations when reviewing funding allocations. The activity was followed by a series of hypothetical scenarios that senators were asked to deliberate on.
Weinberg first-year Carridee Raymundo, who is ASG’s co-executive officer of justice and inclusion, said it was important for senators to bear these priorities in mind during the funding process.
“It’s important that amongst all of these new organizations, that we keep in mind that we’re at least on the same page,” Raymundo said.
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