The Undergraduate Finance Committee, which provides funding for eight organizations that support many of the student groups and events on campus, may face new financial challenges in light of Dartmouth's budget cuts, several people involved with the UFC said. The UFC's budget is adjusted proportionally to tuition increases, but the UFC may experience higher demand for financial support if other funding bodies have less money to allocate to student groups, according to Eric Ramsey, director of the Collis Center and student activities.
The UFC's budget for the 2008-2009 fiscal year will be about $950,000, Ramsey said.
"There are a lot of departments that have had to reevaluate their budgets," Ramsey, who advises the UFC, said. "These are budgets that were focused on supporting student-initiated projects that may have received cuts, so therefore there may be greater demand from the UFC organizations to fund more events fully."
The UFC-funded organizations include the Committee on Student Organizations, Programming Board, Collis Governing Board, Student Assembly, the Greek Leadership Council, the Class Councils, the Special Programs and Events Committee and club sports.
The UFC typically evaluates the organizations' budget requests for the following year each Spring term, but this year's meetings began unusually early, UFC chair Neil Kandler '09 said.
"We started in the mid-winter this year, which is a bit earlier than normal, just because we were concerned about the budget cuts," Kandler said. "We wanted to make sure we had time to look at the overall impact [that the cuts] were going to be having on the College."
Kandler said that UFC-sponsored organizations should keep budget constraints in mind when drafting their funding requests, rather than pushing for maximum financial support.
"It's really going to be important for the UFC organizations to not necessarily just ask for increases for programs, but to really think hard about what programs are really going to be the best programs for the student body and where we really should be allocating our money as a College," Kandler said.
Organizations should not be discouraged, though, from requesting additional funding if they have a good reason, he added.
"One thing we've definitely encouraged is for organizations not to abstain from requesting new things just because of the budget cuts, Kandler said. "The UFC, in the end, will look at each program on its own strength compared to the other programs."
COSO allocates its UFC money to 145 student organizations, according to Liz Agosto, associate director of the Collis Center and COSO adviser. COSO distributes most of its budget, which was about $237,000 for this fiscal year, on an event-by-event basis based on member organizations' proposals.
Many of these organizations also receive funding from other sources, including the Office of Pluralism and Leadership and the Dickey Center for International Understanding, Agosto said.
"I think there is a potential for there to be a higher strain on COSO for funding," Agosto said. "Most of the departments do not have extra funding because of budget cuts, and so all of the money that would have gone to co-sponsorship doesn't necessarily exist anymore."
Some organizations may also seek to become recognized by COSO, Agosto said. If the number of COSO-recognized organizations increases, COSO may request more funding from the UFC, Agosto said.
"There will be some strain in terms of organizations or student programs that have been funded elsewhere coming to COSO for recognition because other departments can't take them on," Agosto said
Programming Board, which can provide up to $5,000 to co-sponsor open social events, may not be as heavily affected by the College-wide cuts, Frank King '10, one of PB's budget directors said.
"A lot of the groups that come to us to get co-sponsorship [also] go to other groups that usually get funding from the UFC," King said, explaining that cuts to non-UFC funding sources will likely not alter PB's budgeting situation.
All UFC-funded organizations will submit their preliminary budget reports to the committee in two weeks, Kandler said. Representatives from each organization will then make a presentation to the UFC to outline their financial needs for next year. Their new budgets, once voted upon by the UFC this spring, will go into effect on July 1, 2009.
"It's a very calculated and deliberative process," Ramsey said. "I think it takes a long time, and I think our students are very conscientious about how they want their student activities fees spent."
