At the end of each academic year, any budgeted funds not spent by campus clubs are collected by the Student Government Association to be redistributed as part of the next year’s budgeting process. Last year, however, that did not happen, and clubs have been sitting on $34,061.92 of what SGA president Quinlan Peer described as “dead money.”
Peer said this discrepancy was realized during the fall semester, but the executive board decided “to wait for a new semester to begin this process.”
Because these funds were allocated as part of the 2021-2022 budgeting process, clubs do not have access to it. “It’s not usable,” Peer said, “because it wasn’t allocated for the purposes you want.” SGA-affiliated clubs only have access to monies budgeted for this academic year, plus any additional funding requests allocated in the fall and any fundraised dollars over the past two years.
In addition, Peer shared with the SGA that only one club has turned in a fundraiser form this year. He warned that if proper forms are not filled out, fundraised money will not be treated as such. “If we don’t know it’s fundraised, because you did it without a fundraising form, that money will be returned [to the SGA] at the end of the year,” Peer announced at Wednesday’s general board meeting.
Katie Flannigan, the executive vice president of the SGA, said that clubs should be filling out fundraiser forms prior to their fundraiser events. The SGA executive board must confirm these fundraisers align with school policy and approve them before they can be held.
Fundraising forms can be found on the SGA website.
Packets were handed out to club representatives with a breakdown of the 2022-2023 budget allocations and spreadsheets explaining the specific dollar amounts each “owed” back to the SGA.
Peer said that a vote to return these funds to the SGA will allow them to use the money again and fund more money requests from the clubs. A motion was made and passed by the majority of the general board to return these funds to the SGA, raising the general fund to a total of $52,444.02.