The Associated Students of Madison Finance Committee allocated the remaining portion of its budget meant to fund student organizations’ event grant requests Tuesday to four of 12 student organizations that originally requested funding.
The ASM Finance Committee allots money to smaller student groups on campus that request funding for planning events, as well as for travel and operation purposes, according to the ASM website. The Committee also maintains ASM’s internal fiscal budget.
According to ASM Spokesperson David Gardner, the committee allocated the funding in its budget to groups in the order they applied, and said all student organizations in the queue were warned of the committee’s limited amount of available funding.
Finance Committee Chair Andrew Kidd said event grants do not usually have enough money to last an entire fiscal year. Additionally, he said there were more events this year than previous years, with more organizations requesting funding due to other financial sources on campus capping their funds.
The committee was able to fund three events close to the amounts each group requested, including the Theater and Drama Graduate Students Organization and The American Constitution Society.
But Force For Freedom: An Abolitionist Movement, an undergraduate organization that aims to raise awareness and help fight to end modern-day slavery, was only funded with the remaining $95 in the event grants.
Nathan Brown and Dan Mackett, members of Force For Freedom, said they asked for around $3,600 to help fund Freedom Week, a four-day event in April aimed at raising awareness on campus of the reality of modern-day slavery.
Mackett said the event will go on even though the group did not receive the requested amount of money they had hoped to and do not have other financial sources as of now.
“Truthfully, it’s mostly going to come out of our pockets,” Mackett said. “But that’s our last option.”
The Finance Committee’s Travel Grants also exhausted all of its money prior to winter break because the committee had already received applications for Spring 2013 travel grants.
The committee will continue to fund groups’ requested travel and event grants in Fall 2013 under the new budgets.
