SGA’s club funding dries up

Student clubs hoping to obtain student fee funding for events and activities this spring may be out of luck, as the Student Government Association's (SGA) club and organization funds have dried up for the year.

In an email sent March 12, SGA told all clubs and organizations, "We regret to inform you that due to record amounts of club activity for the 2009 – 2010 school year, SGA has exhausted its ability to fund clubs and organizations for the remainder of the year." The email was sent shortly after the Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) made its first come-first serve decision on which of the 10 clubs requesting funding at the Friday, March 19 Senate meeting would be allocated the roughly $1500 remaining.

BAC Chairman Evan Shelton said that only two of those clubs would be considered, while the others, and all future comers, would likely not be on the agenda. Shelton said the BAC was considering preliminary ideas for solutions to the problem in the future. "BAC has been drafting ideas," he said. "Right now we're looking into peer institutions. We'll compare their systems to ours and go from there."

For now, the situation looks grim for clubs planning events later in the spring. Some SGA members, however, were optimistic about its implications.

"I actually have a very positive outlook on our funding situation," House representative Kyla Walstad wrote in an email. "Although it is regrettable that several clubs will not be able to use SGA funds as we get closer to the end of the year, on the bright side we have had a tremendous increase in on campus activity this year."

Walstad's buoyant attitude may be little consolation to clubs who had prepared events this spring with the expectation that SGA funds would be available. SGA has not in recent memory run out of funds so early in the year, according to BAC Chairman Mitch Karstens. "We knew that this would be one of the most difficult years in terms of funding," he said. "I don't think any of us expected it to happen this soon."

The news was an unpleasant surprise to clubs submitting proposals for this week's Senate meeting.

"It would have been nice to know, even a month out, that they were running out of funds," said Trey Quiller of the Residence Hall Association (RHA). "We were counting on that funding." RHA, which tries to improve student life for campus residents and had submitted a club funding proposal for consideration at this Friday's meeting, was taken off the agenda when SGA funds began running low.

The group had been planning on taking five members to a national conference this June, at which they would meet with other RHAs from across the country and exchange ideas on improving student life. Without SGA funding, the club will likely be able to take only 2, who will both have to pay significant amounts out of pocket.

"We have been fundraising as much as possible, but we haven't been able to make very much money," Quiller lamented. "I understand that we're not the only club and other clubs should get just as much money, but it's a little upsetting that there's not much I can do about."

Shelton said that although money allocated but not spent can, theoretically, be re-allocated to other clubs, he doesn't anticipate a significant amount of unused money coming back to SGA's coffers and advised clubs to look for other sources of funding.

Walstad, Shelton and Karstens attributed the lack of funds to the increase in club numbers and the cutting of several other funds that had hitherto been available to help clubs with events, such as the Presidential Diversity Fund.

However, House Representative and FIGHT Club chair Matt Seay said that those factors and club activity alone could not explain the matter. "Somewhere along the line some mistakes were made," he explained. "As student government, we cannot take a blameless stance on this."

Seay said that although SGA followed guidelines when handling requests this year, those guidelines may need restructuring to prevent similar mishaps in the future. "SGA had full authority to negotiate the proposed amounts with the clubs. It simply didn't happen often enough," he said. "That problem, I believe, is largely a symptom, not the primary cause."  

"The real cause, in my mind, is a lack of informational flow. Put differently, members in SGA are not specialists in funding requests," Seay said. He recommended that SGA consider restructuring the entire funding process, including decreasing the club funding cap from $4000 to $3000, incentivizing clubs to do more fund-raising, and redirecting the BAC to entirely focus on club funding. If that happens – and it likely will if the new SGA constitution passes – then the BAC would work one-on-one with clubs and be better equipped to handle and scrutinize requests than the House and Senate currently are.