The Student Government Association hosted the first monthly meeting for student organization leaders Wednesday night to relay their concerns about the budget allocations process in an effort to increase communication between the governing body and student organizations.

About 100 students from student organizations gathered in the School of Media & Public Affairs basement at 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday to discuss funding for organizations and accessibility issues with online resources like GW Engage. SGA President Ethan Fitzgerald, who hosted the meeting along with Janae Russell, the executive secretary of organizations, said these new monthly organization president’s meetings for student leaders to discuss issues they are having within their organizations was an aspect of his campaign platform for president in an effort to increase his communication with students on campus.

“All of you are leaders on this campus, and we think it is really important that we take the time to bring your voice together so we can better listen to you and advocate to the administration,” Fitgerald said.

Fitzgerald and Russell held the meeting in an open forum format where students could freely discuss issues they face while running their organizations and hear potential solutions for issues from SGA members. At the start of the meeting, Fitzgerald provided a QR code for students to join a group chat with fellow organization presidents.

Lucia Kustra, captain of GW Ballroom, said profit shares — a method for student organizations to raise money through partnerships with on campus food vendors like &pizza and Panera — “do not work.” She said the partnerships GW has do not always “register” the percentage of funds raised back to the organization after the fundraising period and organizations do not receive the total amount they raised. She said profit shares are advertised as one of the only fundraising efforts organizations can run other than individual fundraising efforts like selling merchandise to get money on campus.

“Providing other avenues for orgs to get funding through actual, genuine partnerships with other outside companies would be fantastic,” Kustra said.

Jeanelle Agyem, a representative from the The African Development Initiative, said the funding her organization receives each year has “varied very widely” each allocations period, making it difficult to plan events for the year ahead. She said sometimes the money her organization receives has been halved from the year prior, and she wants to know the amount of money her organization is going to receive earlier in the year.

The current general allocations process distributes funding to student organizations on a semiannual basis according to the SGA bylaws. Student organizations are able to submit requests, which the senate Finance Committee then looks over to allocate student organizations funding for the upcoming semester.

The SGA senate approved a bill last April to restructure the general allocations process starting in Spring 2025 into an “event-based” model so student organizations can request funding from the SGA based on what events they plan to host as opposed to receiving a set amount of money each semester.

“​​Now you’re scrambling, trying to figure out, ‘okay, how are we going to do fundraising? When are we going to do fundraising? How are we going to fit it in between all of these events that we currently do?’” Agyem said.

Russell said the SGA sent student organization presidents a google form prior to the meeting asking them to highlight any issues they find when managing their organizations. She said multiple leaders pointed to Engage — a platform the University utilizes to publicize organization events to the student body — as being outdated and difficult to navigate. Connor Linggi, deputy director of the Legislative Budget Office, said using Engage is difficult on “both sides” because the platform is poorly organized.

“Engage sucks, there are absolutely no redeeming qualities that I find about Engage every time I use it for anything on either side. It is the worst organized thing,” Linggi said.

Srishti Brahmbatt, the president of GW Orchestra, said creating purchase requests through GW Engage is time consuming and forces organization leaders to go through many steps to find their previous budget requests and determine how much funding they have left. Brahmbatt said Engage does not immediately bring users to the purchase request page but requires outside websites and forms for the process.

“It’s just not very intuitive,” Brahmbatt said. “The fact that we’ve had to go to a completely separate budget request form on Google Forms because we have to sort of navigate Engage is a really big problem.”

Michael Rebar, SGA director of student experience, and Alexandra Tauber, the SGA director of communications, introduced alternative methods to showcase student organization events in addition to GW Engage. He said there is an events calendar on the SGA website which organizations can use to advertise their events, the weekly SGA newsletter where student leaders can submit their organization to be highlighted and the SGA Instagram. Tauber said they feature organizations weekly in the newsletter and on Instagram stories in an effort to increase campus awareness of the many organizations that exist at GW.

“If you submit your org on the forum that’s on the newsletter, your org can be spotlighted featuring events that you have coming up,” Tauber said. “Talk a little bit about what your org is, really get students to look at your org, and see it and join and come to meetings.”

Fitzgerald asked student leaders for their input on the Pathways program, an Office of Student Life process for matching student organizations with faculty advisers. Some student organization leaders, like Amita Ganesh, the president of WRGW District Radio, said a lack of communication from her adviser left timely administrative and budgeting tasks unfulfilled from last year.

“I wish there was more of a transparent process of adviser office hours, where we can just go up there and talk to him,” Ganesh said.

Fitzgerald said the future monthly meetings will continue to address questions and concerns of organization leaders about funding and other issues that arise throughout the year. He said they will serve as a space of open conversation from student organizations to SGA, as well as from one student organization leader to another.

“Moving forward, it’s going to be more just you all talking to each other,” Fitzgerald said. “If you guys want to work with each other on fundraisers, if you guys have other advocacy projects that you’re passionate about, this will be the space for leaders to come together.”

The next meeting will be Oct. 16 at 6:45 p.m. in the SMPA building.