The Student Government Association’s student organization funding pool is set to double next semester, following what the governing body’s leaders said was months of delays from officials in providing details about the increase.
The SGA will see an approximately $345,000 increase in student organization funds per semester — combining a new “rollover fund” from previous years of unspent SGA money and a new $50 fee on full-time undergraduates this semester — effectively doubling the SGA’s student organization funding capabilities, SGA Vice President Liz Stoddard said. Stoddard said the increase, which will bring the SGA’s total organization funding budget to well over $600,000 next semester, will allow the SGA to allocate significantly more money to student organizations, and could bring an end to student organizations’ yearslong concerns about inadequate funding and insufficient cosponsorship allocations.
SGA President Ethan Lynne — who was then the SGA’s vice president — and former SGA President Ethan Fitzgerald first announced in April they had reached an agreement with the Board of Trustees to secure the “largest funding increase” for student organizations in University history following months of advocacy with officials. Lynne and Fitzgerald said the Board would approve the changes over the summer when it passed its budget.
Stoddard said officials told SGA leaders the Board planned to finalize the change before the start of the semester, but did not until September. She said the Budget Office did not provide the exact funding figures the SGA was set to receive until late October, months after students were billed the additional $50, which caused “unnecessary stress” for SGA leaders who were left unsure if they would be able to follow through on their promise made last year.
Stoddard said although the funding boost won’t fully take effect until the SGA’s spring allocations, leaders can already distribute more money to organizations’ cosponsorship requests this semester — additional funding organizations seek beyond their general allocations to host events and attend conferences, among other uses.
“It allows for orgs to do what they’re here to do, which is to create community, create culture at GW, and create fellowship in ways that they wouldn’t have been allowed to do because of our funding difficulties,” Stoddard said.
Stoddard said she didn’t know why officials took so long to finalize details about the fund, but she said discussions about implementing the new $50 fee began before the officials began their budget cuts or made the decision to lay off staff to reduce its structural deficit this fiscal year.
The news of the budget increase comes after officials announced they would cut the University’s expense budget by 3 percent in April, and later implemented a hiring freeze in July before laying off 43 staff members in September to combat a structural budget deficit. The increase in student organization funding stands as one of the few instances this year in which officials have increased the amount of money they allocate to a program.
A University spokesperson said officials implemented the new Student Activity fee this fiscal year which helped increase funding allocated to the SGA, though they declined to confirm exact figures for how large the increase is and what the exact cause of the delay was. The spokesperson said University-wide budget cuts did not impact the timeline of sending the funds to the SGA and that the DSA was in conversation with SGA leaders about establishing “guiding principles” for how the new funding would be spent during the delay.
“The University and Division for Student Affairs are committed to supporting the financial needs of the Student Government Association as well as individual student organizations,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Student organizations have historically requested far more funding from the SGA than existed in their budget, with organizations requesting $1.5 million in spring 2025 and the SGA’s general allocations budget only totaling about $285,000. Stoddard said the new fund will make allocations “a lot easier” for SGA leaders, who will have to cut less from organizations’ funding requests going forward.
Stoddard said officials only provided information about the fund after SGA leaders continuously asked for updates since the beginning of the semester. She said the SGA received finalized figures from the University Budget Office hours before the SGA’s Sunday deadline to draft student organization allocations for the following semester, leaving her unsure until late in the process if they would receive the increase in time to spend it this spring.
“I wish there was just a little bit more urgency into this, at least from the UBO,” Stoddard said. “But in our communications with the DSA, I think it was clear that there was a lot of delays coming from external sources.”
She said she thinks student advocacy has convinced officials to reverse other cuts to campus resources, like returning Gelman Library to 24-hour access after officials slashed its hours at the beginning of the year — a change officials attributed to a temporary staffing issue.
“Because this had been there for so long, I think that had it been taken away, there would be bigger issues, at least from a student perspective,” Stoddard said.
Stoddard said the total funds raised from the new $50 Student Activity Fee will amount to about $500,000 per semester. She added that 60 percent of that total will go to the SGA for organization funding, while the remaining 40 percent will go directly to the DSA to be spent at its discretion. She also said the SGA will be able to use roughly $100,000 accumulated from the new rollover fund per year, adding that the SGA plans to spend $45,000 per semester on general student organization funding allocations and cosponsorships, and to reserve $10,000 from it for organization funding emergencies — like if the SGA accidentally overspends.
SGA senators finalized those details of how the rollover fund will be used in a bill passed at Monday’s SGA Senate meeting.
Stoddard said SGA leaders will also fully reimplement the SGA’s old general allocations and cosponsorships funding system for spring 2026, giving organizations larger funding pools at the start of the year and allowing smaller requests for additional funds throughout the semester. She said the SGA scrapped an unpopular event-based funding model set to debut this fall over the summer, but could not change organizations’ fall 2025 allocations because they had already been finalized last semester under the previous system.
“They’re going to be higher anyway because they’re regular GAs, and now they’re going to be even higher than regular GAs because of org expansion,” Stoddard said.
Lynne, who negotiated the funding increase alongside Fitzgerald last year, said he and Fitzgerald engaged in “numerous detailed meetings” with officials from DSA, the University Budget Office and University President Ellen Granberg’s office about the implementation of the fee. He said he remains “incredibly frustrated” at the length of time it took the University Budget Office to release the additional funds to the SGA, but he is looking forward to organizations receiving more funding next semester.
“I am glad that Liz and myself still maintain a regular collaborative relationship with DSA officials now discussing the usage and future of this increased funding,” Lynne said in an email.
He said organizations will benefit greatly from the increased funding, and that although the increase will not go into full effect until next semester, the SGA’s finance committee will be able to start dishing out the additional funds for co-sponsorship requests to organizations in its weekly meetings.
“Hopefully we can see even bigger events on campus and even more resources for students,” Lynne said.
