The Student Association Senate earlier this month approved the general allocations for student organizations for the spring semester, totaling more than $240,000.
The SA fulfilled 16.75 percent of organization funding requests this semester, a drop after officials diverted 16 percent of the SA’s budget to the University-Wide Program Fund, which funds multicultural and large-scale events. Nathan Nguyen, the director of the Legislative Budget Office, which consulted on allocations, said the SA reviewed each organization’s applications at least four times.
“A significant amount of money was set aside specifically for cultural orgs to make sure that we are funding them because we know that they’re voicing complaints, and they think that they’re not being funded properly,” he said.
Nguyen said within its internal allocation processes, the finance committee added an additional round of funding to give to student organizations based on a surplus they had after several rounds of allocations.
Food and drinks made up 21.51 percent of the funds allocated, while subscriptions to services like Canva and Wix made up 4.7 percent of funds and registration fees made up 4.68 percent of funds.
Nine student organizations received the full amount they requested. Of these nine organizations, Circle K International, a service organization, received the most funding at $800.
EMeRG and GWU Esports received the most funding, at $8455.55 and $8131.35, respectively.
Twelve student organizations received none of the funding they requested. Most of these funding request denials were due to SA bylaw prohibitions.
GW Program Board did not receive any of the $170,000 they requested for the Spring Fling and the GW Gala, which has historically been held at the National Portrait Gallery. The funding was denied due to SA bylaw prohibitions, and the SA deferred the funding requests to the University-Wide Program Fund.
Program Board did not appeal the denial of allocations.
SA Sen. Linsi Goodin, CCAS-G and chair of the finance committee, said the finance committee disbursed allocations to fund student organizations “as equally and as as equitably as we possibly can.” She said the process was behind due to “a variety of factors.”
Goodin replaced former SA Sen. Ian Ching, ESIA-U, as chair of the finance committee after he resigned. His resignation followed accusations that he delayed the allocations process by about two months.
Senate Chairperson Pro Tempore Demetrius Apostolis said the appeals process occurred over a nine- to ten-hour period on Dec. 11. He said the appeals process granted student organizations about $24,000 of the $290,000 they requested.
“Considering our cultural orgs and then going down the list, we really wanted to make sure that everyone was treated fairly throughout the process,” he said.
The next Senate meeting will be held Jan. 23 at 8:30 p.m. in the Continental Ballroom.
