Student government’s office of finance has reached its funding limit for student organizations.
In a Nov. 12 Listserv to North Dakota State students, commissioners said they will no longer be funding practices, equipment, materials or any other non-event requests for student organizations. Commissioners Jay Homan and Mason Wenzel said due to overbudgeting in the 2014-15 school year and a large number of contingency requests for funding, student government is now limiting funding requests.
Homan and Wenzel are responsible for divvying up and distributing the $3.8 million student activity fee to the student organizations that apply and meet the financial guidelines for funding.
Once depleted, a reserve amount of funding is available to turn to.
This year, due to some larger projects from previous years, student government is not able to keep up with requests and has had to cut down.
Wenzel, assistant commissioner of finance, said, “We have reserve funding that we can draw from every year. There is a minimum amount that needs to be kept in this reserve each year, and unfortunately this year we have reached that limit.”
Not having those reserve funds available this year has left few choices ending in budget cuts.
Last year a large portion of the funding was put towards larger projects including upkeep around campus and takedown and installment of the Great Rides Bike Share stations.
“We need to do some adjusting and move our funding around this year to allow for more sustainability and more efficiency,” Wenzel said.
Wenzel added this is normal and that every year the office goes over its budget and needs to draw upon the reserve funds to allocate for invested projects.
For this year, once funding has been depleted, the office will cease any further funding.
The office of finance’s email said temporary organization requests for funding and other special projects will still be funded as usual.
The email also said the remaining funds are on a first come, first serve basis.
“Any funding you have already been allocated or any funding you have already been approved for is still available for reimbursement,” the email said.
Basically Finance wasted the student activities trying to push an insanely expensive bike share program, failed to plan ahead, and has now used up all the money. This is despite the massive budget cuts made to student organizations. When students are paying student activities fees, they expect to get funding for student activities like student organizations, not to pay for campus upkeep, and waste money on an overpriced, underutilized, bike share program.