Longwood University’s Student Government Association (SGA) is taking a new approach to the annual club and organization budget requests process with an exclusively online application.
“Usually, you would have to do everything in paper form, and that was causing a lot of problems,” said Queen Burrell, SGA treasurer.
Burrell said the paper process was unorganized, the significant number of required forms causing some students to approach the Student Finance Committee (SFC) without all of the papers they needed and confusing senators as well. This new process is meant to be more efficient.
“We’re trying to streamline it a little bit so that we are being fair to all organizations and we’re using the same rules and the same guidelines for everyone across the board,” added Gina DeMarco, assistant treasurer.
Burrell explained that representatives from clubs and organizations can access budget request packets on the SGA home page, longwoodsga. weebly.com, and submit the forms by Feb. 28.
During Spring Break, Burrell will email organizations and notify the organization representatives of when they should come before SFC during the weekend of March 16 and 17, with appointment times ranging from 12-7 p.m. each day.
SFC will assign allocations to organizations depending on what they deem appropriate to allocate to each group during the budget revision process over the weekend of March 23 and 24.
Burrell plans to email the entire Senate the following Monday with the assigned allocations and allow them a week to find any issues or make any changes with the allocations.
Finally, during the Tuesday, April 2 SGA meeting, the SGA will make the official allocations to all of the organizations.
SFC expects club and organizations’ budget requests to include the cost of specific line items they believe they will need for their group during the upcoming academic year.
“I’m really impressed when the representative knows and can speak on behalf of their budget,” said DeMarco. “If you know, and you’re passionate about what you’re presenting for, I think that’s a huge thing.”
Auditor Alisha Royal is involved in the budget request process in a different way than Burrell and DeMarco. At the end of each academic year, she reviews “what the organizations were given for the previous year, and then I follow up to make sure they spent the money SGA gave them appropriately and how they line itemized it in their budget.”
Royal said auditing is “more of a precautionary role for SGA to have.” She also described the auditing process as an “efficiency checklist.”
According to Burrell, while there is a to-be-decided amount that the Senate will officially allocate during this annual process, this cap is a guideline for the allocations and will be looked at during the conclusion of the process.
After four years of overseeing the budget request process, DeMarco believes it is an effective system. “It’s intimidating no matter what, but it gives us enough time to really analyze the budget,” she said. ”Even if groups don’t get all of the money they’re asking for, it’s important for them to come and even attempt to get some sort of budget set up for next year just so you know what you’re working with,” said DeMarco. “You don’t come back in August with an absolute blank slate and having to start fresh.”
