UA forms Funding Steering Assembly to match student groups to resources

Last semester, Undergraduate Assembly treasurer and College senior Amanda Acosta Ruiz had not even used the Common Funding Application to secure resources for her own club. This year, she is leading the initiative to examine club funding across the University.

Acosta Ruiz was elected last semester and also currently serves as the treasurer for the Assembly of International Students. She realized the lack of discussion amongst funding sources as she started meeting with various student groups after her election.

“I wanted to set a meeting where funding sources are together to streamline the process and make funding easier,” Acosta Ruiz said. She added that various funding sources do not know much about one another, making it difficult to refer student groups to each others’ resources.

The Funding Steering Assembly — a group of various funding sources that Acosta Ruiz started this year — met for the first time on Sept. 8 to discuss improvements to the funding process for events and clubs around campus. The meeting discussed improving the CFA, the application used to match student groups to funding sources outside of the Student Activities Council. They agreed to increase the level of communication between funding sources and prioritize which ones student groups should contact first.

Currently, the application is built to prevent overfunding or underfunding by showing how much money has already been awarded to a certain event. However, funding sources are not interacting with the application as much as they could because they are not aware of all the features of the application, Acosta Ruiz said.

For this reason, PennLabs, the student organization that runs the CFA, opened Monday’s meeting with information on how to properly use the application. New guidelines on the application will ensure that groups only reach out to relevant funding sources. For example, political groups should reach out to political or general funding sources, not religious ones.

The assembly began ordering funding sources based on how specific their missions are. The first resort sources are the ones that fit into particular niches and have stricter guidelines for funding — such as Faith Fund, which can only give money to religious groups or events. However, the assembly met Monday to further clarify which sources should be classified as first resorts.

“It’s a difficult [topic],” SAC Chair and College senior Kanisha Parthasarathy said. “Our funding sources on campus are limited, so every group’s natural response is to say that they are the last resort.”

Currently, student groups could wait up to two weeks to hear back about funding due to the meeting schedules of funding sources. In the future, the Funding Steering Assembly will discuss how funding sources can better communicate and potentially collaborate. Additionally, they will debate the criteria needed to receive resources.

The Funding Steering Assembly originally planned to meet monthly but will meet weekly until it prioritizes the order for student groups to approach sources for funding.

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