Fiscal Year 22 Budgets
Overview
Budgets are the Fiscal Year (July 1st – June 30th) allocations of funds through SGA for student organizations and departments on-campus that are mostly used for items and events that occur each year – especially if that funding is needed over the summer or before the Fall semester starts. The Budget process is a bit more intensive than the Bills process with additional restrictions in place along with more communication and time required. In order to submit a budget, a representative from your organization must attend a budget orientation session, and for your budget to be considered, an organization representative must also attend a JFC Review Session.
Due to the RSO Policy, the process looks a little different this year with only the JFC meeting required after the budget submission rather than having to appear before the legislative bodies. Additionally, this policy has made the requirements, timelines, and submission deadline much more strict, with no leeway available. Budgets will also be submitted on Engage this year, rather than on JacketPages, which will be covered in the Budget Orientation Sessions.
If you are unfamiliar with this RSO Policy and how it has impacted student organizations’ operations and funding options, please visit the RSO Policy Change Website.
This page will be updated throughout the process with resources, materials, and information that can assist you in understanding and traversing of the budget process. Most of the resources will be posted after the first Budget Orientation Session. If at any point you have questions about the budget process, your submission requirements, or setting up your budget please reach out to the Joint VP of Finance – Josh Eastwood.
The Fiscal Year 22 Budgets have already been allocated. Please reach out for information around the Fiscal Year 23 Budgets.
Review the FY22 RSO Budget Allocations – HERE
Budget Process
1. Attend a Budget Orientation Session
- Attending one of these sessions is a requirement to submit a budget – if your organization does not go to a budget session your organization will not be able to submit a budget. A list of sessions is available below.
- It is an hour long information session to go over the policies, procedures, and timeline of budget requests with time to answer any questions.
- The schedule and locations of these sessions will be made available on the SGA website by the third week of the Fall semester. There will be a variety of times offered throughout the Fall semester.
2. Submit Your Budget Request on Engage
- After compiling a list of all the items you will be requesting in the budget, fill out the budget request form on Engage.
- We are in the process of updating the Resources section for guidance and additional documentation – however all of this information will be covered in the Budget Orientation.
- Please ensure you include all of the applicable submission requirements in your budget and that the submission is completed to the best of your ability. The budget form is designed to ensure you will have to submit all required information. Those submission requirements are:
- For All Budget Requests:
- A detailed written description of the program, activity, or event
- Written cost estimates of all items or services requested
- A written estimate of revenue expected to be generated in the coming year through dues, ticket sales, fundraisers, donations, or other means
- Certification that your RSO’s advisor has been provided an opportunity to review the budget submission
- If your RSO was registered in the prior year, a written account of revenue generated in the prior year through dues, ticket sales, fundraisers, donations, or other means
- If your RSO has received SGA funds in the past, a written statement is needed demonstrating that your RSO has used the past funds effectively to accomplish the goals for which those funds were awarded
- For Budgets Requesting Event Funding:
- In addition to the required information listed above
- Information/Documentation showing that students will be involved in the planning and implementation of the event
- A description of how you plan to promote the event to the student body
- For All Budget Requests:
- All budgets must be fully and properly submitted by Friday, October 23rd, 2020 at 11:59pm – there will be no exceptions.
3. Schedule a Joint Finance Committee (JFC) Budget Review Session
- By the twelfth week of the Fall semester a JFC Review session schedule will be posted to the SGA website and emailed to all budget submitters.
- A member from your organization will be required to attend a time slot to present the budget request.
- If a member from your organization is unable to attend due to a schedule change they should reach out to the Joint VP of Finance to reschedule their review session time slot.
4. Attend the JFC Budget Review Session
- Bring any materials you think might help explain your budget request and the prices you’ve listed.
- This is a casual meeting, as JFC is made up of about 10 members of undergraduates and graduate students but will take about 15 – 30 minutes depending on the length and complexity of your budget.
- Your organization will be asked to talk about your budget and answer any questions that might come up to ensure that all items requested meet policy.
- If your RSO does not appear at your scheduled JFC session time an email will be sent to you to determine a new time. Failure to appear at the second meeting will result in your organizations budget being denied.
- Your RSOs budget request will be evaluated against policy within that review session but any changes made do not reflect your final allocated amount.
5. Receive Budget Allocation Email
- JFC will review all budgets first then, if necessary, reduce all budgets at a pro rata basis – proportionally across the board – to reach the allocatable amount for budgets.
- Your organization will be contacted if this occurs to give you an opportunity to reduce your budget request on your organization’s terms and to retain what is most beneficial to your organization.
- An allocation email will be sent to your organization by the second Friday in March confirming the total amount allocated for your budget in the upcoming fiscal year as well as be updated on Engage.
- If you received less than your requested amount you can appeal following the procedure laid out in the Appeals Section of the RSO Policy Website.
Fiscal Year 22 Allocations
First and foremost, thank you for your continued patience as we experienced setbacks in this budget process and worked under a new policy. JFC has put hundreds of hours into this budget process, not counting the work done outside of committee meetings, to allocate these funds. Needless to say, we have learned a lot from this new budget process and will be implementing changes moving forward to ensure we uphold a consistent, understandable, and equitable process for all RSOs – no matter the previous experience or size:
- A consistent standard of initial communications over each fiscal year coupled with broader marketing for budget orientations.
- Budget planning resources and workshops to assist in budget creation and direct policy questions.
- Tangible pricing documentation examples as well as standard quotes to use for general items such as marketing and campus offered services.
- Improved policy resources, flow charts, and guides beyond the word documents supplied this year.
- Amendments to the RSO Policy, to make it more forgiving and tailored to true annual budget needs, especially as it relates to capital expenditures, travel, and events.
We are already implementing a communications standard and marketing plan for next fiscal year’s budget cycle while building out better resources to be ready to go. Further, we are working with admin to make changes to the RSO Policy on a near-daily basis. We are also extremely open to feedback, so if you have any suggestions for changes, comments, or concerns about your FY22 Budget experience, please feel free to reach out.
The FY22 Annual Budget allocations can be found here, with some notes on the specific line items if any changes were made, and the allocation in column F. Engage budgets will be confirmed once full approval has been made but are available to review in their current state by going to the financial dashboard, should you be interested in seeing more detailed comments, notes, and changes to your budget request. If there are any discrepancies between the spreadsheet and Engage, please let us know so that we may provide the correct budget amount to you. Please note that this is not the final spreadsheet, but rather the allocation notification to RSOs; we will provide a clearer version with the departmental allocations (SOFO, CSE, CRC) included once all approvals from admin are given with referenceable line items to use when accessing the funds. We are still required to have this budget approved by the Institute’s Budget Office later in April – however, at this time we do not expect any changes. As a reminder, these funds will become available to your organization on July 1st, 2021, the start of Fiscal Year 2022.
If you think there was an error made with your budget allocation, there are two remedies for this. The first being an Error Report form, found here, where if there is a minor error made for example a line-item reduction for insufficient documentation even when you know the documentation was provided, you can fill that out with a few details. This form will close on April 9th. We will return an answer and adjustment within 2 business days. If your organization thinks adjustments were made outside of the RSO Policy, you can start a formal appeal by reaching out to the Joint VP of Finance – Josh Eastwood – before April 9th, requesting a written decision for your budget as a whole or a specific line item. You can review the formal appeals process here for the next steps to take or reach out and I am happy to assist you as well to walk through the steps.
The final allocated budget is posted on this website and JacketPages as usual for you and your organization’s reference on April 16th. We will be holding summer JFC bill reviews at the start of the fiscal year should you require funding beyond the budget allocation at the start of the fiscal year – more information on that will be sent out once we get closer to the end of the semester. If you are concerned about your budget allocation or the financial standing of your organization, please reach out as we are here to help and provide solutions.
Thank you all again for working with us through this new process and policy!
Budget Orientation Sessions – Archived
Please note, at this time all budget orientations have occurred and the budget submission deadline has passed for FY22. This section is just for record keeping purposes. If you are concerned about missing this deadline or about funding for next fiscal year – reach out to Josh Eastwood, the Joint VP of Finance.
| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, September 16th, 2020 | 6:30 PM EST | BlueJeans |
| Saturday, September 19th, 2020 | 10:00 AM EST | BlueJeans |
| Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020 | 6:30 PM EST | BlueJeans |
| Saturday, September 26th, 2020 | 2:00 PM EST | BlueJeans |
| Wednesday, October 7th, 2020 | 6:30 PM EST | BlueJeans |
| Saturday, October 10th, 2020 | 10:00 AM EST | BlueJeans |
| Wednesday, October 14th, 2020 | 6:30 PM EST | BlueJeans |
| Saturday, October 17th, 2020 | 2:00 PM EST | BlueJeans |
| Wednesday, October 21st, 2020 | 6:30 PM EST | BlueJeans |
Attending a Budget Orientation session is the first required step of submitting a Budget request. For this year, all Orientations will be held online via BlueJeans. Generally, the session will be broken into three segments: Budget timeline, Budget policy, and Budget submission walkthrough. Finally, the session will conclude with a Q&A portion if there are any specific questions you may have about your budget or organization’s submission. All of this should take no longer than an hour. It is asked that you sign-up for a budget session to let us know you’re coming but this is not a requirement for attendance.
Attendance will be tracked throughout the meeting for your organization to meet the requirement. A link will be shared at the end of the budget submission walkthrough with a form your organization will need to fill out that will let us know what organizations were there. If you leave before the budget submission walkthrough is over you will not be counted, and if you arrive more than ten minutes after the presentation has started you will also not be counted as attending.
Your organization will receive an attendance confirmation email within 72 hours of attending an orientation session. If you do not receive an email and your organization did attend a session please reach out to the Joint VP of Finance – Josh Eastwood.
JFC Budget Review Sessions – Archived
JFC Budget Review Sessions
Please note, at this time all budget review sessions have occurred and the time for sign-ups has passed for FY22. This section is just for record keeping purposes. If you are concerned about missing this deadline and requirements, or about funding for next fiscal year – reach out to Josh Eastwood, the Joint VP of Finance.
Please note, these review sessions are only available for organizations who have submitted an FY22 Budget before the deadline. Any sign-ups made by organizations who have not submitted a budget will be deleted. Your organization’s budget submitter should have received an email with the information below. If they have not, immediately reach out to Josh Eastwood, the Joint VP of Finance.
In order to move forward with the budget process, your organization will need to attend a Joint Finance Committee (JFC) Review Session in the Spring Semester. These review sessions will consist of representatives from your organization and the JFC going through your submitted budget to get clarification on the line item’s requested and reviewing the pricing documentation your organization will be providing (if you have not already included those in your submitted budget). More information and resources on pricing documentation will be made available before the end of this semester.
Currently, we are only offering Saturday sessions in January and early February from 9 am – 2 pm Eastern Standard Time in a completely virtual format on BlueJeans. Additional emails will be sent out with the added times, reminders to sign-up, and further resources to assist you in your preparation for the JFC budget review.
All organizations attending a Session need to review this procedure document for how the JFC Budget Review Sessions will run, how to access the BlueJeans call, and what to expect during the review.
The procedure for review sign-ups are as followed:
- Time slots are first-come-first-served. Please reach out if there is an issue with the times available or sign-up system.
- Only one time slot may be reserved per organization; however, multiple people from your organization can attend the review. If your organization signs up for more than one time slot, the first sign-up made will be kept and the others will be removed to make room for more organizations.
- Your organization can sign-up up to 24-hours before any given time slot.
- Your organization can cancel up to 24-hours before your selected time slot.
- If your organization misses your selected time slot or fails to cancel in time, your organization will be given one more chance to appear before JFC and must sign-up for another time slot. The same 24-hour sign-up and cancelation procedure applies. If your organization misses your second time slot and fails to cancel in time, then your budget will be denied.
Sign-up for a Budget Review Session Here
The BlueJeans link for all budget review sessions is bluejeans.com/6774570714 and is included in the Calendly sign-up above and procedural document as well.
JFC Inter-Committee Review Sessions – Archived
JFC Inter-Committee Review Sessions
At this time, JFC is currently reviewing all budgets to match the RSO Policy, a notification of allocation will be sent out to all RSOs who submitted a budget on March 26th.
Out of an abundance of caution, and to ensure proper due diligence is done on each submitted budget, JFC is moving the budget allocation notification from March 12th to March 26th. This is due to a number of reasons:
- An exceptional number of submitted budgets – 106 in total, a near 20 submitted budget increase from the previous request cycle.
- The new process of only JFC reviewing them has drastically increased the processing time for an individual budget.
- New requirements around quotes and mandatory JFC review sessions have impacted the process much more than initially projected.
JFC wants to ensure that each and every submitted budget is reviewed properly, and we did not believe this was feasible to do so with the previous deadline. Furthermore, if a pro-rata basis reduction needs to occur, we would like to give your organization the opportunity to provide a preference on such reductions of which the March 12th notification date would not have permitted. At this time, JFC has not sent out any information around a pro-rata basis reduction, due to JFC still processing the budgets. This in no way impacts the July 1st date when the allocated budget funds will be made accessible.
Budget Resources
This excel sheet contains the initial allocation to all RSOs who submitted a budget request for FY22. This is not the final sheet, as a cleaned up version with referenceable budget lines numbers will be added on April 16th. Clicking this will cause an Excel sheet to be downloaded.
If you are interested in seeing detailed comments of a submitted budget before and after it is fully approved in Engage, follow these steps listed here.
This document has all of the deadlines and overarching calendar of the FY22 Budget Process. Use this to plan out who can appear at the required meetings and when you will need to have all materials together for you Budget Submission.
Archived Budget Resources
A step-by-step guide on how to submit a budget on the Engage Platform for your reference. This was covered in the orientation and includes information about the Engage Finance Dashboard.
This is the presentation given during the orientation sessions to be used for reference if needed. Please note it has been modified for the website for readability and comprehension – however, the information is identical.
This spreadsheet contains all RSO budget requests made through the FY22 budget submission. It is a static sheet and will be updated as determinations are made – however, to follow your specific organization’s request, you can login to Engage to view the request directly. Clicking this will cause an Excel sheet to be downloaded.
These are the base policies applied to all Budget funding requests including the prohibited allocations as well as item maximum limits. This document should be used as reference while planning and submitting your organization’s Budget to ensure that the allocation process goes well.
Containing some preparatory information for the JFC budget review session, this is how the budget review sessions will be run, with the 15 minutes broken out into 3 main segments. This also contains some additional information about how the reviews will work over BlueJeans.