This February, over 200 student organizations applied for funds that would help pay for events they were putting on campus. The leaders of the student organizations were told that they would receive their checks by the middle of March; however, after a month, a handful of organizations have yet to receive the checks they were granted.
The Student Senate Appropriations committee currently has $77,500 from student fees that is to be allocated to the student organizations on campus on a case-by-case basis. The process of obtaining these funds is through a written application, in-person interview with the student organization and two members of the Appropriations Committee, and then an extensive deliberations process in which committee members decide how much funding an organization will receive out of the amount they applied for.
Michael Nantais, a second-year studying sports management and vice president of National Parks Club said that he contacted Molly Mueller, a third-year studying political science and international studies and student body treasurer, after his organization did not receive a notification that their check was ready.
“We emailed asking what’s the issue, it’s been more than two weeks and we’re near the end of April, what’s going on?” Nantais said. “She said that your check is being processed right now and all we can really do right now is wait. It’s just been frustrating, trying to get the funds we applied for so long ago … The semester is almost over and we still haven’t even gotten our appropriations.”
Nantais said that his student organization needed the funds they had been allocated because the organization’s club members are currently having to pay out of pocket to pay for the events and activities they have had planned.
“The $300 would have been more than enough to cover the expenses from the trip but since we didn’t have those funds, we had to rely on our own fundraising that we did, but that wasn’t enough to cover the trip,” Nantais said. “About half of the expenses we had to pay out of pocket, so we we’re waiting for the appropriations to come so we can reimburse our own selves.”
Cameron Howard, a third-year studying electrical engineering and the treasurer of Climate Reality Club, said that it felt like a miscommunication and that it could have been easily fixed had they been more informed at the beginning of the process.
“They released this big packet of what you need to do and have filled in,” Howard said. “There was only one page of a checklist of all the documents that we needed to turn in. I think that could’ve been expanded upon better to properly make sure we knew that we needed these forms in versus turning in the ones we had.”
Howard said she was confused why they would go through the process of appropriations if they didn’t have the forms necessary to apply in the first place.
“We were promised after spring break we would be given the funds,” Howard said. “And we were counting on it, we had events planned around having these funds. They emailed us and said it’s taking a little longer, and we understood. But, a month went by and I emailed the treasurer and after about a week of us emailing back and forth, she was like ‘just to let you know you didn’t fill out all the forms, so you’re going to have to do that before we get the checks.’”
Generally, the appropriations process and the appropriations committee exists to help student organizations receive the funding necessary to help them achieve their goals and hold events that impact NC State as a community. The goal is to get students involved on campus, without having to worry about curating the funds necessary to do a task out of pocket.
According to Mueller, all of the checks must be processed by the DASA business office before being distributed to organizations. After Senate approves the funds allocated to every student organization, there is normally a two-week turnaround for this process. However, this spring cycle a handful of clubs did not fill out their W-9 tax identification forms and were unable to get their checks processed.
“The orgs that are still waiting on their checks, there have been issues in the business office… the new student orgs have to turn in W-9’s for the first time or there is some sort of change with the change of address or change in name that requires the organization to resubmit a W-9,” Mueller said. “So the W-9 just adds time to the process by the business office.”
Another issue was that the former Student Government adviser who worked closely with the appropriations committee and treasurer to help organizations obtain their funds, resigned. Jessica Murphy, director of Student Involvement, and Mueller had to work together to learn the process.
“There was a little bit of confusion, in terms of no one else had gone through the process before,” Mueller said. “I had never gone through the process before, the new advisers had never gone through the process before, the office members are also new, so there was sort of a lack of institutional memory in terms of getting the process done, so that’s why I think having W-9’s after, that’s why I think that occurred after we submitted the vouchers. But, these are all process issues that will definitely be corrected in the next cycle.”
Mueller said that while the amount of time it is taking to get the checks to the student organizations is not abnormal, the goal is to get the checks that are still being processed to the organizations before the end of the academic year.
“The goal is the end of the semester,” Mueller said. “They are all in the business office right now, they are all being processed right now. I can’t do anything about it at this point, it’s in the hands of the business office. I want them done as much as the student orgs do, I want student orgs to have this money as soon as possible, so hopefully they’ll be done by the end of the semester.”
