The Student Activities Commission is considering altering its club budget allocation process by providing clubs with tiered-access lump sums, a change that they hope to institute next semester.

SAC is still working on the wording of the proposition, which will be further discussed at its next meeting on March 2. A decision regarding budgeting will have to be reached by the end of March to institute the change by next semester.

According to SAC Vice Chair Barry Goldsmith (MSB ’17), the idea for the change in budget allocation has been in the works for some time, though it was only this year that SAC members really pursued the plan.

“The idea has been floating around for several years now, but until this past year nothing was ever really done to explore it in any detail,” Goldsmith said.“I give Connor and the rest of the commission the utmost credit for really going above and beyond to come up with reforms that will greatly benefit our student organizations on campus.”

According to SAC Chair Connor Maytnier (COL ’17), the current application process has a series of steps that can be cumbersome for groups involved in applying for funding. To receive money, a club must estimate the numbers of events it will host for the semester and the number of attendees the events will attract.

“In the current system, groups must be extremely detailed, listing specific prices and estimated attendance numbers,” Maytnier said.

To remedy this problem, SAC has devised a new and improved budgeting allocation process that would reduce the number of steps and eliminate other difficulties posed by the current system. The new system would provide funding to groups by evaluating their needs and placing them in one of 10 tiers. The tier will be determined by a variety of factors, including a rough outline on what activities a club plans to organize.

The tier of the club would also be determined by other factors including a club’s number of members, past funding and current number of events, among other things.

Once the tier level of the group is confirmed, the group will have control over how the money is divided up for events and usage.

“Groups would then receive a lump sum of money for the semester,” Maytnier said. “They would have the freedom to portion it out as they wish across the semester’s events.”

The new budgeting system would further alter the previous system by changing the event cancellation or modification process and the current penalties that SAC imposes for these deviations.

Under the system that SAC currently uses, groups wishing to cancel or move an event that has already been allocated funds must submit a form and wait for SAC to vote. SAC members want to change the system so that clubs can decide when and how to use the funds given to them, so that every cancellation and modification does not have to go through a SAC vote.

“Funding will be determined based on a general outline of events, not a detailed event-by-event model,” Maytnier said.

According to Maytnier, the current system also enforces penalties based on whether or not an event authorization form was submitted, which can often lead to mistakes and confusion. If the form is not submitted by the club for some reason, the group is penalized by the current system. But the new system would simply allocate funds and allow the club to use them for events at their discretion.

The proposed system would retain safeguards for ensuring groups use their funding wisely by taking into consideration how many events the group actually held in deciding their budget for the next semester.

The proposed changes have already been receiving support from clubs, according to Maytnier.

“Over 30 organizations have responded and the feedback has been largely favorable toward the proposed system,” Maytnier said. “Based on many of the comments, I think organization leaders see the proposed system as a way of simplifying the budgeting process while also granting more flexibility to groups.”

Animalia Vice President Casey Nolan (COL ’17) said that she would prefer this type of tiered funding.

“While I can’t anticipate the exact effects of the plan, as someone who’s had to plan budgets for clubs for the upcoming semester, I prefer the tiered access to benefits in that it doesn’t force people to anticipate every event that they’re going to have throughout the semester,” Nolan said. “While SAC does allow for some flexibility in planning events during the semester itself, I think it’s easier for people to allocate money as they wish with a block plan.”

Goldsmith emphasized how these changes come with the continued prosperity of student groups in mind.

“Our main priority in making these changes is to improve the system from the student groups’ perspective,” Goldsmith said. “Right now they almost have to jump through hoops of bureaucracy to get their funding, but we believe the proposed changes will greatly lessen those hurdles and make it easier on our groups.”

Associate Director of Student Engagement Amanda Carlton, SAC’s adviser, said she had no opinion on the budget structure change, but that she continuously seeks to support the aims of SAC members.

“I don’t necessarily have an opinion to share on the topic,” Carlton said.  “As the advisor to SAC, I regularly encourage them to consider different methods by which to accomplish their goals and meet the needs of their constituent groups, while also ensuring that they are seeking multiple perspectives on the methods they are considering before a final decision is made.”

The change comes at a time when SAC is struggling with funding cuts.

“Over the past few semesters, we have had scale cuts that have been substantial challenges for our organizations,” Maytnier said. “For example, the scale cut this semester is 71.8 percent and last semester’s was 63.7 percent.”

Maytnier said that SAC is always concerned with the best way to provide clubs with the funds they need, even though demand will constantly exceed the supply of funds.

“At the end of the day, SAC realizes that requests will always outnumber our resources,” Maytnier said. “This past semester, we received $350,000 in requests and had only $150,000 to allocate. Despite this, SAC also realizes that we can work to make the budget allocation system more simplistic, efficient, and equitable for all groups.”

Maytnier said that the change is more about making the process easier for the students than changing the amount of funding itself.

“While we can’t make more money fall from the sky, SAC does have the ability to simplify its processes,” Maytnier said.