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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The Central Student Government
Student Organization Funding Committee
distributes
$500,000
to
student
organizations every semester on a refund
system.
With
student
organizations
canceling all in-person events following
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s “Stay Home,
Stay Safe” Executive Order and the
University of Michigan’s recommendation
that students return home, it has pivoted
to refunding as many organizations as
possible for non-refundable expenses.
“In cases where expenses related to a
cancelled event were already paid for and
cannot be refunded, SOFC will reimburse
these expenses with valid documentation
according to our Proof of Payment
guidelines,” reads a statement on the
SOFC website. “This policy change applies
only to expenses that are ‘non-refundable’
and have already been incurred.”
SOFC distributes its funds in nine
waves over the course of the fall and
winter
semesters.
The
committee
decided to maintain funding for waves
seven through nine, for which student
organizations must apply by March 23,
March 30 and April 6 to be eligible for
SOFC funds.
Business
senior
Crede
Strauser,
outgoing chair of SOFC, said roughly
$50,000 is available for the last three
waves. Strauser said many student
organizations are applying for funding for
expenses not typically covered by SOFC.
“Organizations
are
circling
back
and applying for expenses they maybe
hadn’t applied for earlier because of
their experience knowing that SOFC is
extremely competitive and they wanted to
apply for the things they were most likely
to get funds for at the time,” Strauser said.
Typically, leftover SOFC funds rolled
over into CSG’s fall budget. For the first
time, funding will be available during the
summer through a SOFC process, rather
than requiring applicants to apply through
the Summer Assembly and present their
plans in person. Strauser projects $7,000
to $8,000 will be left over for the summer
term.
“I think that those kinds of decisive
actions just helps for a lot of organizations
to not have that additional concern about
their organization potentially having a
negative account balance or potentially
not being able to carry out their activities
once they get back to normal because they
don’t have the funds to do so,” Strauser
said.
Michigan
Movement,
a
student-
run non-profit focused on combating
homelessness and poverty in Washtenaw
County, had to cancel its in-person events.
Instead of pausing operations, MIM
adjusted their work amid the pandemic.
Though
MIM’s
seminal
MIMKit
event, which partners with Ann Arbor’s
Mercy House to create more than 100
care packages, had to be canceled after
the governor’s stay-at-home order, MIM
decided to instead directly provide Mercy
House with items it needed most.
LSA
junior
Lindsay
Calka,
vice
president of MIM, said the community
that
benefits
from
their
work
is
particularly at risk during the pandemic.
“It was kind of like a double whammy,
where not only is this group already going
to be suffering effects from decisions made
for social distancing and shelter in place,
but we couldn’t do the things that could
potentially help them in this scenario,”
Calka said. “We really didn’t have the
option to just stop. We had to pivot what
we were doing.”
Because the items differed from the
long-term care items that typically fill
MIMKit care packages, MIM had to
apply for wave nine SOFC funding. SOFC
granted MIM only half of what they
requested, even though this exact amount
applied for during the eighth funding
wave was granted in full.
“I think priority-wise, we should be
seeing how we can be using our money
the best way to serve people who need it
right now,” Calka said. “I know there’s a
lot going on (in the greater CSG budget)
but it would have been nice to have that
exact award met that we were guaranteed
beforehand.”
Calka said MIM is working on plans to
continue serving vulnerable communities
with less money than anticipated. They
plan on filling funding gaps left both by
SOFC and canceled fundraisers by writing
grants and applying for funding in other
areas.
Engineering senior Zeke Majeske, a
former member of CSG, said the best way
for SOFC to support student organizations
during this time is for them to improve
their process with the newly freed
time usually spent reviewing funding
applications.
“(I hope SOFC) spends as much money
as they can on organizations and try
to come up with improvements in the
process so next semester when it gets
rolling again, it works even better for
students,” Majeske said.
Reporter Julia Rubin can be reached at
julrubin@umich.edu.
JULIA RUBIN
Daily Staff Reporter
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DOMINICK SOKOTOFF/Daily
Workers weld materials in preparation for a field hospital at the TCF Center in Detroit Monday afternoon.
SOFC covers expenses for
student groups amid crisis
Funding committee of Central Student Government works to
distribute money to different organizations for disrupted events
2 — Thursday, April 9, 2020
DESIGN BY JONATHAN WALSH