RSO Officers,
Thank you for your patience on the delivery of initial allocations for the RSO Budget Hearing process! We truly appreciate every single organization and officer that took the time to prepare their materials, answer our questions, and present their budget to us.
TL;DR
Please read the entire email as it’s all important information and context
- It’s impossible to fund all requests – over $1,000,000 was requested and we only have ~$400,000 to allocate
- Appeal signups are here – if you do not agree with your allocation, sign-up for a slot
- There were questions about policies that came up during Budget Hearings – we’ve clarified them below so that all organizations are aware of the standing policy
- Initial allocations are linked below along with general notes
- I will be sending out individualized emails shortly – I apologize for the delay in doing so. Budget Hearings have been immensely taxing on all of our personal schedules.
- Plug for USG: Vote in the USG E-Board Elections (including Treasurer)
Impossibility of Funding
I do want to address an inherent impossibility to fund organizations to their fullest amount. USG’s allocations depend solely on the level of the Student Activity Fee, which is currently $80 per semester for undergraduates and $50 per semester for graduates. Simply put, it is impossible to fund all organizations to their fullest amount, and the Student Activity Fee is not meant to be the only source of funding for larger organizations.
This is a historic year for us. For the first time, over $1,000,000 have been requested in organization budgets from the Student Activity Fee. USG not funding your organization to your full request is not a sign of the student government or the Ways and Means Committee (WAM) not supporting your organization or seeing its purpose – every organization on campus is crucially important and impacts a wide variety of students. We simply are unable to allocate more money than has been paid in by students and thus must make cuts. We understand that this increases dues, increases strain on officers to find external funding, and decreases organization activity as not all events or travel can be covered.
For organizations looking at other funding sources, please see this RSO Funding page. Please reach out to us or rso@mtu.edu if you have any questions regarding funding from sources outside the Student Activity Fee. We’re happy to help you find a solution!
| Total Requested from SAF in FY2026 (last year) | $925,207.73 |
| Total Requested from SAF in FY2027 (this year) | $1,017,889.49 |
| Total Amount to be Allocated from the SAF (this year)Not including set-aside for Appeals or the Opportunity Fund | $390,787.10 |
| Difference in Request Versus Allocation Power | $627,102.39 |
On a personal note, I can say that the WAM has worked very hard to deliver allocations that are as fair as they can be. A cumulative 324 hours has been spent hearing, deliberating, and re-evaluating all of the organizations. While I cannot say that I’m jumping for joy that we cannot fund 60% of requested funds this year, I am personally satisfied with the work that was done to ensure that each organization’s needs were considered under the circumstances that we find ourselves in with the high requests each year.
Appeals & Next Steps
If you are comfortable with your allocation, no further action is required on your part.
If you do not feel comfortable with your allocation and wish to appeal to the Ways and Means Committee, please keep reading. You are eligible to participate in another 10-minute hearing where you can voice your appeal and new request.
We reserve the right to grant partial appeals or to not grant an increased allocation based on your appeal and the level of the appeal funds. If we receive more appeal requests than we have in the appeal budget, then we simply will not be able to grant all appeals.
Appeals will take place on Thursday, February 26th and Monday, March 9th with slots that can be signed up for. You may only sign up for one of the two days – results will not be released until after March 9th. Participants may be the same or different to those in Budget Hearings. We still ask that only MTU students are presenting or answering questions. We highly encourage you to bring some new reasoning to your appeal, as we’ve written down most of the information you’ve given us before.
The deadline to sign up for an appeal is Friday, February 27th at 5:00PM. This will be a hard deadline, as we have to schedule our time around the number of appeal requests.
On Wednesday, March 18th, 2026 at 7:00PM in the MUB Alumni Lounge, we will vote on the final allocations in the USG meeting. You are also welcome to appeal here as it’s your right as a member of the Student Assembly, but there is no set / defined process. The entire USG body will be voting on the allocations, so if you feel that the Ways and Means Committee has misrepresented you, this is your opportunity to appeal to a larger body of students.
Policy Clarification
We wanted to clarify the current Bylaw and standing policy from the Ways and Means Committee. This has been clarified in the Information Packet and throughout individual hearings, but this is your official notice – any Purchase Requests that do not follow this policy will be denied.
- Items or food purchased by the Student Activity Fee cannot be sold – that is your organization acting as a “business” and you should aim to make a profit over expenses. For example, Parade of Nations food sold at the cultural exchange at the Dee will not be reimbursed by the SAF.
- Any Line Items making use of the “direct educational, artistic, and cultural experience” rule change introduced this year must be reasonably open and advertised to all students.
- “Reasonably open and advertised” at a minimum looks like posting the event on Involvement Link, creating digital and physical advertisements, and pushing information out to the student body well in advance of the event.
- Food or giveaways that accompany travel events (such as a cultural meal while out at a conference) are not permitted expenses, as the opportunity is not reasonably open or advertised to all students.
- Direct giveaways that are intended to support individuals who are not students at Michigan Tech are generally not permitted. If the expenditure provides some service, experience, or professional development to students at Michigan Tech, then it is permitted (such as funding a hotel for a speaker on campus or materials that will allow students to run workshops at local schools).
- The main things we are attempting to avoid are expenditures that do not invest in the student experience. For instance, we can’t fund movie tickets for children or relatives of students, and we can’t pay recurring costs that don’t directly impact students.
We would rather you ask than find out afterwards that something is not reimbursable. Please reach out to me at usg-treasurer@mtu.edu if you have any questions about these policies.
Initial Allocations Spreadsheet
Linked is a Spreadsheet that contains all of the initial allocations for each Registered Student Organization that applied during Budget Hearings. We’ve also included the following data points for convenience and transparency:
- Initial Request (or updated during hearing)
- Percentage of Request Granted
- Delta From FY2025 (last budget that you had)
- Delta From FY2026 (current budget that you have)
- Increased / Decreased “Per Student Cost”
- Approximate Request Towards Social Events*
- Approximate Request Towards Giveaways / Food* (under Bylaws: Article XV, Section 4.4)
- Notes
- Please see the second sheet including detailed explanations about the description left in the “Notes” column
- If you see a note saying “Expect Additional Email”, I will be sending that shortly. Unfortunately, special circumstances cannot be addressed in a large email or automatic template, so I need time to draft a custom explanation.
*Due to organizations being able to adjust the amount spent on each line item without approval from WAM, we do not enforce the amount spent on each line item relative to the allocation given.
While not anticipated, the Undergraduate Student Government reserves the right to make modifications to allocations based on student enrollment projections and related budget constraints. Modifications will be communicated in writing to RSO officers as soon as possible if enrollment projections change substantially from current estimates and necessitate adjustments. Please remember that these budgets apply starting on July 1st, 2026.
Information not included within this Spreadsheet are individual Line Item strikes that the Ways and Means Committee voted on. If you had items struck from your budget (or significant changes), you will receive an email with reasoning behind the strikes sometime during the upcoming week.
This spreadsheet is open to everyone with the URL, and you are welcome to share it if you would like to. My main goal as Treasurer throughout my term has been transparency, and while I understand that the result of Budget Hearings may not be what you have hoped for, I hope that you feel that we have been transparent and open about the process, data we use, and your status. We don’t intend on making this data private. I would encourage you to reach out to me directly if there’s something about this process that you feel is not transparent – we can work together on a way to ensure that the entire process is open for students to see. After all, it’s your Student Activity Fee.
Questions
If you have any immediate questions, please directly respond to this email and I can assist you! Otherwise, please feel free to reach out any time at usg-treasurer@mtu.edu!
We cannot overstate the importance that you all contribute to Michigan Tech as officers. Regardless if you’re a new organization, an organization seeking new heights, an organization shifting gears, or an organization powering through another successful year, we truly appreciate the time and effort that you’ve put into campus this past year. Thank you.