​
SGA funding for certified & recognized student groups starts with the Student Activities Fee. This fee is a semesterly fee paid by full-time students, and a smaller fee for part-time students. Once this fee is collected from all students at the University of Maryland, the administration and disbursement of the fee is ultimately governed by SGA's bylaws, which can be found in full below.

Distributing the Fee
The Student Activities Fee (SAF) is then automatically allocated to fund various offices and governing bodies, such as the Undergraduate Student Legal Aid Office, SORC, SEE and SGA, based on preset percentages of the fee. These percentages can be found in the SGA bylaws, but are generally quite small, as this leaves over $1 million available to be allocated to student groups for programming. This is the point in the process where you, as members of student groups on campus, get involved. The remainder of the SAF is then split up into monthly pots to be allocated through the six allocation periods per school year, as well as the Group Help emergency funding program.

The Monthly Allocation Process
A quick general timeline of how one month's allocation process runs:
  • Budget Training modules are posted on our ELMs page in order to educate student groups about the Funding Process and its rules and regulations
    • Completion is required for groups to be considered for SGA funding
  • The funding application opens on Terplink on Wednesday and will stay open for 1 week, when the application is active, a message is posted via ELMs and emailed out to all recognized SGA orgs
    • The Finance Committee holds office hours to answer any questions that student groups may have 
  • Once the deadline has closed, all applications are fully reviewed, vetted, and voted on by the Committee. This process takes about 10 days after which, the initial allocation decisions are announced 
  • Groups that are unhappy may request an appeal to remedy any mistake the Finance Committee has made in its ruling
    • The student org is not allowed to introduce new information, such as new documentation
    • The results of Committee appeals are communicated directly to the groups who appealed. If at this point the group is still unsatisfied with the results, they have the opportunity to appeal to the SGA Legislature at the next general body meeting
  • Once all budgets are settled, the CFO presents the committee's funding  recommendations to the full SGA legislature in the form of a legislative bill. Once this passes, the month's allocations become official, and the transfer process of funds into each group's account begins
    • ​SORC Finance office will then take over the process of spending funding
Disclaimer: the above information is intended to help you better understand the SGA Funding process, and is not intended to serve as a concrete resource or as a reason to fund or not fund a program. Funding applications are reviewed in accordance with the SGA Bylaws, the Finance Manual, the Discretionary Guidelines, and any applicable University of Maryland, or Maryland state policies and laws. Both the SGA and Student Groups are responsible for the fair and equitable use of the Student Activities Fee. These expectations are laid out in in full in the SGA ByLaws: Article VII, Section 1:D, Section 2, and Section 4.