Senators approved the Undergraduate Student Government’s 2025-26 Funding Department Guidelines at a meeting held over Zoom on July 23. Chief Financial Officer Avery Horton presented the procedural changes and language clarification made to the guidelines.

Some of these changes include reviewing funding applications on a first-come, first-served basis and requiring RSOs to provide traveler and login information for event registration for on- campus events in the funding application. Additionally, the guidelines now require the funding department members to provide detailed reasons for denying a funding request. 

Horton said that in the past, the funding department members would deny applications without disclosing reasoning, so she changed the guidelines for transparency purposes. 

“We want to make sure that when applications are denied that people know why,” Horton said. ”So when [applications are denied without proper reasoning], that’s not an instance of procedural issues, [but] that’s an instance of people not being trained properly.”  

The 2025-26 USG funding department guidelines now include the specific reasons for denying applications, such as past misuse of funds within the academic year, inappropriate contact with funding department members or professional staff within the academic year, an RSO receiving funding from another University income source, or USG having low remaining funds due to high use. 

Additionally, individual organizations with events over $4,000 and multi-day events will now be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to ensure effective use of USG funding. 

“The rule before was that events over $4,000 were automatically not considered, but due to rising costs of things, I just wanted to add in the stipulation,” Horton said. 

USG also unanimously approved the appointment of the assistant executive director for the First Generation Student Assembly . 

Chief Programming Officer Alisandra Edmonds announced the appointment of Joslyn Kearn, a junior majoring in sociology, as FGSA’s assistant executive director. Kearn previously served as the advocacy intern in FGSA.

This summer meeting marks the end of the transition period from the 144th USG senate to the 145th senate.