Criteria for General Funding Eligibility
RHA will assess funding requests by the following criteria, in no specific order. If any one of the below criteria is not met, then the author of the request will be denied or asked to revise and resubmit a new funding request form.
- The organization must be applying for funding as a House Council, Area Government, Resident Assistant, Peer Mentor, Defined Residential Community, a student group working with a Faculty in Residence, or other Residence Life employed, elected, or otherwise appointed person acting in their official capacity.
- The organization must contain at least one member of SGA. Note that all undergraduate students enrolled at the University are members of SGA.
- The event or activity in which the organization is requesting funding for must involve residential undergraduate students.
- The organization must provide an estimated number of residential students that will be involved.
- The purpose of the event or activity of requests should primarily be beneficial to the residential areas and their residents.
- Requests must include a list of items purchased for an event, or an equivalent (i.e. travel itinerary for a trip, purchased items, etc.) in order to provide a full breakdown of their budget for the General Body.
- The organization must include a clear amount of funds being requested, as well as a breakdown of their budget with expected costs.
- The organization must present a clear plan of how they will effectively deliver their services.
- Requests and approvals must be based off of neutral, objective criteria, and may not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, or disability.
- Requests must be submitted at least two academic weeks prior to the Funding request meeting.
Funding requests exceeding 501.00 USD
- Upon receiving the Funding request, the RHA executive board will schedule the group requesting funds to present the submitted request to the General body, the procedure is as follows:
- The group may present the submitted request and supporting documents (such as, but not limited to, a PowerPoint and cost estimates) to the RHA general body.
- The presentation time is five (5) minutes, extendable once, by five (5) minutes.
- The General Body will pose questions for five (5) minutes, extendable once, by five (5) minutes.
- The General body will enter a period of discussion for five (5) minutes, extendable once, by five (5) minutes.
- The General Body reserves the right to alter the amount of the funding request, upon submission of an amendment to the main motion, by a General Body member.
- The funding request will be approved upon the General Body reaching a majority consensus in favor of allocation.
Funding requests under 501.00 USD
- Upon receiving the Funding request with a value of under 501.00 USD, the RHA Executive Board adhere to the following procedure:
- The group will be scheduled to present to the RHA Executive Board, at the next possible time.
- This shall not override any existing RHA commitments (such as, but not limited to: another funding request.)
- The group may present the submitted request and supporting documents (such as, but not limited to, a PowerPoint and cost estimates) to the RHA Executive Board.
- The presentation time is ten (10) minutes.
- The executive board may pose questions at anytime, however, as soon as a question is posed the presentation timer will be stopped, so that time spent asking and answering questions is not counted against the presentation time.
- The RHA Executive Board will vote on the allocation of funds, at the next RHA Executive Board meeting.
- This vote requires a vote of ⅔ majority in order to allocate funds.
- If the RHA executive board votes against allocation of funds, the group will be permitted to present the funding request to the RHA General body under the procedure outlined in Title5, Section 4, but shall be exempt from the requirement to request 501.00 or more USD.
Funding Restrictions and Procedures
- In funding any organization, RHA shall expressly prohibit the use of funds for any activities prohibited by federal or state law.
- Funded organizations will be required by RHA to clarify that funds will not be used in a manner that violates state or federal law.
- RHA prohibits the use of funds for activities that may violate any University policies.
- House council in 'bad standing' are prohibited from applying for funds
- Please see Article II, Section 3 of the RHA Constitution for more details.
- RHA will not provide funding for any programs used to endorse political candidates or political campaign contributions for, including, but not limited to, Area Government, SGA, municipal, state, or federal elections.
- No organization shall receive more than $100 per student participating and/or attending per single program, with the exception of a student requiring long-distance travel, in which case the RHA General Body may vote to provide excess of $100 .
- RHA can co-sponsor programs with SGA. The organization requesting funding is responsible for notifying RHA of funding coming from other sources, including fundraising, requests to the SGA, RSO budgets, house councils, and other means.
- Funding requests will open on the day of the first meeting in the fall, and will close 2 weeks before the first day of elections in the spring semester.
- Upon approval of funding the student organization agrees to accept any additional restrictions that RHA has put in place, including, but not limited to the following:
- Events that are funded by RHA must clearly state on all advertising and promotional items that their program is made possible in part by the Residence Hall Association, and/or include the RHA key logo.
- Every organization that receives funding from RHA will submit a Post-Program Evaluation Form, through the RHA Campus Pulse page, Google Docs, via email, or with a printed copy submitted to the RHA Executive Board. Forms must be submitted no later than two weeks after the funded program occurred.
- In the event that the funded program was a conference, the organization’s members that attended such conference must present their experience to the General Body.
- For any other organizations that received funding from RHA for a program, the Treasurer will announce the results of the program to the General Body based off information provided in the Post-Program Evaluation Form.
- All unused funds provided by RHA to an organization will be returned to RHA within a reasonable time, but no later than 30 days.
- Any organization that received funding and fails to submit either the Post-Program Evaluation Form within the allotted time will be ineligible for any future funding requests until the form(s) is submitted, or until the end of the academic year, whichever is later.
- RHA reserves right to limit or deny requests if any of the above restrictions and/or criteria are not met.
