The Associated Students of Madison’s student fee committee weighed plans to put unspent money toward funding the hundreds of student organizations on campus in a meeting Monday.
Under the Student Services Financial Committee plan, any funds a General Student Services Fund group had left over in its budget mid-way through the school year would be transferrable to be put into Finance Committee grants.
“I think what this does is that it makes it clear to groups that they are
encouraged to return money that they haven’t spent,” SSFC Chair David Vines said. “It will probably be looked at more positively by SSFC members if groups return money they haven’t spent.”
SSFC briefly debated the idea of incentivizing the budget transfers to make GSSFs more likely to give unused funding back to ASM.
Committee members agreed any incentives would have to be minimal during the first few years of operation.
“The first couple years are kind of like a test phase, so we should keep the
incentives light,” Rep. Devon Maier said. “It is harder to take incentives away than it is to give them out because reducing incentives could cause a backlash.”
SSFC plans to finalize details of the mid-year budget transfers in the coming weeks.
[Photo by Louis Johnson]
