The Budget Advisory Committee is running out of funding for the fiscal year, which is raising concerns regarding club funding and spring events.
The committee gets its funding from the Student Activity Fee, a student-paid fee that funds clubs and other organizations on campus. Ian Sachs, the Director of Finance, noted that money is running out due to funding decreases from budget cuts and a stagnant SAF.
“We don’t have a lot of funding this year, and we will run out. It will happen with more events and larger organizations that have to request more funding to support their members,” Sachs said.
Sachs said there is only around $48,000 left in the budget for this fiscal year. At the start of the semester, the budget was around $84,000. He noted that BAC only gets some of the SAF-funded budget as they share it with Student Life.
Aside from delegating funds to clubs and organizations, BAC handles the guidelines for what that process looks like. BAC establishes the guidelines for the following fiscal year every May.
To make up for the lack of funding, BAC recently updated their guidelines. Clubs can now only request up to $4,000 per fiscal year, which is a $1,000 decrease from last year.
“This does put a lot more strain on both the back end of BAC trying to make sure that clubs can get the funding that they need, but also [on] clubs themselves because there’s that uncertainty,” Sachs said.
Sachs oversees the commitee alongside resource manager Madeline Metzger and student activitity specialist Heather Marx. SGA senators comprise the rest of the committee and hold the majority of the voting power.
BAC ensures senate meetings can cover other matters besides club funding by dedicating itself to funding clubs, which helps when there are a large number of funding requests. The committee also standardizes the requests for funding and ensures no alienation occurs.
Contrary to the bills passed by SGA, which pulls from reserves, club funding pulled from BAC’s budget is not subject to The General Administrative Recharge. GAR is an internal revenue tax that covers basic infrastructure costs for the university.
The tax is currently set at 9% and is not charged to sponsored projects, gifts, student aid programs or appropriated funds.
Graphic by Raven Sanchez.