Over the past month, the finance committee has worked diligently to holistically evaluate and approve each student organization's budget requests for the fall semester. In total, we have approved $130k to 109 clubs to start the semester. Treasurer Chen, the rest of the finance committee, and I approved budget requests based on adherence to the SAC guidelines, the presence of appropriate documentation indicating rates/pricing, the amount of student organization funds, and the sheer amount of funds requested. Larger events were potentially denied due to being too taxing on our smaller, semesterly budget allocation, however, this does not mean we are abandoning funding these events/endeavors entirely. We encourage clubs who may not have received sufficient funding from semesterly allocation to file an event grant request for supplemental funding, and the finance committee and I will work with your organization in supporting your endeavor in the most feasible means possible. This also does not guarantee that all endeavors will be funded in their entirety or even at all if, for instance, they are found to conflict with the SAC guidelines, lack appropriate documentation indicating vendor rates/item pricing, prove to be too taxing on our event grant allocation budget, or student org demonstrates a surplus of group funds that can be utilized to fund endeavor without SGA support. For any questions regarding your student organization’s semesterly budget allocation or any urgent requests for revision, please feel free to reach out to me at bbenja11@jh.edu or Treasurer Chen. at jchen326@jh.edu.
Looking at the rest of the semester, we hope to transition toward holistically evaluating and approving event grants, meeting with organizations who may want to urgently appeal their fall allocation, and setting the foundation for our Allocations 101 workshops, where we will directly help student org treasurers with any questions they have with filling out event grants and developing out Fundraising 101 resource, which we believe will improve the fundraising process that is now required to be eligible for a spring SAC allocation.