An inefficient application process has prevented some student groups from obtaining money from a fund designed to support them.
This fall, hundreds of student groups requested funding from the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s Student Organizations Operational Fund, commonly known as SOOF – a resource for student group supplies, advertising and other operational costs.
Each year, groups submit online SOOF applications that are approved by Student Organizations, Leadership & Engagement, commonly known as SOLE, then sent to the USAC Budget Review Committee, which allocates money to approved student groups.
For an application to be approved by SOLE and continue onto the Budget Review Committee, it must be signed by the group’s signatory. Signatories are often alumni and can be difficult to contact for approval. If a group’s signatory does not respond to the approval request before the deadline, the application is rejected and the group does not receive funding.
About a dozen SOOF applications were delayed this fall because some groups did not complete their applications or some signatories did not respond to the application’s requests in time, said Jacob Ashendorf, USAC budget review director. The groups approached the Budget Review Committee with complaints about the SOOF application, but Ashendorf said he thinks more groups were affected as well.
Problems with the SOOF application process have been persistent, Ashendorf said. Ashendorf added that he hopes to remove the signatory review process, and eventually reform the entire application.
The increase, approved during the summer, in USAC councilmember’s stipends led to a $35,000 drop in available SOOF funds. The funding drop, coupled with a 30 percent increase in the number of SOOF applicants, caused groups to receive less money then they had in years past.
Of the $107,000 in the SOOF fund for the 2013-2014 academic year, about $85,000 was given to groups in the first round of SOOF allocations this fall.
The remaining $22,000 will be available during the second round of allocations that take place during the winter quarter. The second round of SOOF allocations are only for student groups who did not apply for or receive funds in the first SOOF disbursement cycle this fall.
Some students groups said they’ve experienced financial hardship this year, and SOOF did not provide them with any funds.
Eryk Waligora, finance director for the Bruin Democrats, said the group encountered problems during the application process and did not receive any money from SOOF.
Waligora, a fourth-year history student,said that he did not find out about the holdup with his group’s application until after the SOOF allocations for 2013-2014 were made public, leaving the Bruin Democrats without time to fix the application and receive funding.
“The little things are so essential, but you don’t notice that the money isn’t there until you have to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket,” Waligora said. He added that it remains unclear why his group’s application was not approved.
Ashendorf said he plans to discuss changes to the SOOF application at a meeting on Nov. 20 with the Associated Students UCLA information technology services. He said he will suggest eliminating the signatory review process, which he believes is unnecessary.
Patty Zimmerman, the student government services manager, confirmed the Nov. 20 meeting, but said she could not comment on any specific application changes because the meeting has not yet taken place.
William Chakar, president of the Bruin Republicans and third-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student, said that his group did not receive SOOF funding this fall because its application was held up in the signatory review stage and was not approved before the deadline.
“We were pretty upset, because we have always been very well-funded,” Chakar said.
Chakar added that the Bruin Republicans spent less and pursued private donations in order to replace the SOOF funding they did not receive.
Other students were able to get money from SOOF this year without any complications.
Meet Bhagdev, president of the Engineering Society of UCLA, said his group did not experience application difficulties and received $360 from SOOF, but that the application can be very difficult for student leaders applying for the first time.
Bhagdev, a third-year computer science student, said that dealing with the SOOF application can be tedious, and that it can be confusing to simply claim the allocated money because of the steps and paperwork involved.
But some student group members said they found the SOOF application and allocation process easy to navigate.
Akshay Ravi, a fourth-year physiological science student and co-president of InterAxon, an education group affiliated with the UCLA Brain Research Institute, said that his group had no trouble applying for funding this year.
“I haven’t experienced any accessibility issues to the application,” Ravi said, “I just wish groups had more leeway in explaining themselves and why they deserve funding.”
While Ashendorf admits that the current system has flaws that must be addressed, he said that working for a second year as budget review director allowed him to identify the problems with SOOF and form solutions.
This article doesn’t actually tell us what a signatory is. Each student group on campus is required to have three signatories on file. At least one signatory is needed for almost every logistical need, including reserving rooms and venues, starting a bank account at the student credit union, and, yes, signing off on funding applications.
Why have signatories? Well, the people scheduling rooms, starting the bank account, and reviewing funding applications need a way to verify that submitted applications truly are from the group in question. Not having signatories involved (or rather, allowing “signatory proxies”) led to the false student group endorsements during the debacle that was the USAC 2012 elections. If a group can’t find even one of their three signatories (who should obviously be active members invested in the group) or have the foresight to change their group’s signator(ies) before they graduate, then the fundamentals of the group are questionable.
Removing or relaxing the requirement to have at least one signatory sign off on the SOOF would thus be a mistake. Without a signatory, groups would find not just the SOOF application difficult, including spending their SOOF allocation that might be better used by groups that do have active signatories.
Speaking from experience, the SOOF approval requirements are very ambiguous. I’m in a Greek organization that unsucessfully applied for funding because there was no indication on the SOOF application that a Greek organization’s funding request needs to be approved and reviewed by FSR *in addition* to the rest of the bureaucracy.