ASUI has a new club funding initiative to improve transparency and accessibility. Clubs will now be assigned a senator who will bring a bill to the senate floor for vote.
The amount of funding and purpose of funding will now be publicly discussed and modified as needed to be voted on though. Previous funding requests were submitted to the ASUI president, ASUI director of internal affairs and the ASUI advisor.
“There wasn’t enough transparency. And when clubs were denied funding, there was no explanation why they got denied,” said ASUI President, Seyi Arogundade, in an interview with The Argonaut.
Arogundade had other concerns with the previous system such as the lack of a specific person in charge and limited club knowledge of the opportunity and application process. The new system created a director of finance position to solve this issue.
“Creating the director of finance position was super important to us and making sure that whoever has that position is knowledgeable in finances would make sure we figure out a new system that works best,” said Arogundade.
Lance Butikofer is the first director of finance.
The form requires the name of the club, estimated number of members, amount of funding being requested and the purpose of funding. Once the form has been submitted, ASUI will assign a senator onto the case who will create a bill that will be presented on the Senate floor. This process is intended to ensure the bill will support the needs of both the club and ASUI.
Once introduced, senators will discuss and possibly modify the bill as needed. If the bill is passed, the club will receive the agreed amount of funding. If not, the bill will move back to the sponsoring senator for more substantial modifications.
Arogundade said this process would take one to two weeks depending on the amount of debate or edits applied to the bill. While the previous system was faster when requests were approved, Arogundade believes the transparency and collaboration with club with be a positive for both.
The funding is part of the total ASUI budget and is reserved for club funding requests.
Funding requests forms for clubs are available at https://linktr.ee/asuidaho under “ASUI Funding Board Request Form.”
Josie Adjanohoun can be reached at [email protected].