After months of hard work and conversations between GUSA and student organization leaders, GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations (FinApp) Committee finalized club budget allocations for Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) on Mar. 16. This year, more than 1.3 million dollars were allocated to student organizations, a slight increase from previous years.
Student organizations gathered their financial information and submitted applications for funding ahead of the FinApp budget summit on Feb. 22 and 23, where they were assigned their initial budget allocation for the upcoming school year. Following the summit, there was a period of appeals where clubs could provide more information and appeal for adjustments to their funding.
Georgetown’s funding for student organizations and activities is collected by the school administration through the Student Activities Fee. At FinApp’s annual budget summit, this fund is then allocated to advisory boards, such as the Student Activities Commission and Media Board, and major student organizations, such as the Georgetown Program Board (GPB) and Lecture Fund. These groups then distribute their funding among their affiliated organizations and operations.
Student leaders reflected on the budget allocation process in interviews with the Voice. Amidst newly-elected FinApp leadership and the varying distribution of funds, many organizations have expressed their hope for budget increases in the future and detailed changes in their own financial structures. In particular, transparency and communication have become key topics of discussion.
Funding and financial resources play a vital role in student activities at Georgetown. For organizations like GPB, funding shapes their ability to provide accessible activities for Georgetown students, ranging from free movie screenings to the annual Mr. Georgetown.
“One thing that’s really important to us is that there’s no paywalls or restrictions for people to participate in [GPB events],” Sarah Silver (SFS ’25), president of GPB, said. “I see GPB as being really important to creating memories and tradition on campus, but also giving students a way to access programming and fun things that aren’t expensive.”
In FY25, GPB faced a 7.51% decrease in budget allocation. Silver said this budget cut impacted both the organization’s vision and operations.
“What the budget cut mostly impacted was our ability to scale up events,” Silver said. “What it usually impacts are smaller events. Like we do free ice cream for students once a month, those have to be significantly smaller. We usually do them less frequently when we get our budget cut.”
For student publications like the Caravel, Georgetown’s international affairs newspaper, funding directly impacts their publishing scale. The Caravel’s editor-in-chief, Katherine Hart (SFS ’27), described the organization’s current publishing format with a mix of online and in-print editions, highlighting the limitations of a tight budget.
“We can’t grow in a school that’s known for its IR [International Relations] departments without funding to do so,” Hart said. “Right now we’re kind of at a standstill where we could produce a fourth print edition and amp it up to one per month. However, we just don’t have the funds to physically do that.”
For the Performing Arts Advisory Council (PAAC), which governs co-curricular performing arts groups on campus, funding determines how it can support its affiliates.
In the last few years, PAAC has consistently received a relatively low percentage of its requested funds. In FY25, only 60.65% of its initial request of about $150,000 was fulfilled. Yunji Yun (CAS ’26), who is the current chair of PAAC, detailed the impact of this limited funding.
“Part of the impact of low allocation last year has been that PAAC groups can’t really handle long-term problems. We are usually allocated just enough to hold our regular programming,” Yun said. “Because throughout the years there is wear and tear and everything that happens from costumes to sets, we are really never able to address those things because we don’t have the extra funds to do so.”
When the initial FY26 budget allocation was released in February, clubs and boards responded and adjusted their expectations accordingly, with some appealing for more funding.
For example, PAAC appealed to FinApp for an allocation increase, primarily to finance more travel expenses, Yun explained. The appeal appears somewhat successful as PAAC’s final fund allocation increased by $3,000 compared to its initial allocation.
While the Caravel is waiting on Media Board to further distribute the funds, Hart also expressed hope for budget increases and explained that the publication switched printers in order to reduce costs and increase print editions. For FY26, the Media Board received a 19.87% increase in allocation which will likely lead to an overall budget increase for individual media organizations like Caravel.
Beyond student clubs, the FinApp Committee in charge of funding decisions also worked to make their fund allocation process fair and transparent.
Tina Solki (SFS ’26) is the FinApp chair of this cycle and worked closely with the rest of the committee members in determining the budget allocation for FY26. Solki said that FinApp has been trying to become more transparent by providing more explanations for their decisions.
Solki said that advisory boards and GUSA face a “lack of institutional knowledge” that can make it difficult to facilitate the budget process.
“Groups don’t know what they’re doing and they’re kind of punished for not knowing what they’re doing. But if you’re gonna punish groups for not knowing what they’re doing, you have to have taken every action possible to have informed them and to have been engaging with them and making yourself available,” Solki said. “Only once you’ve achieved that standard can you start to be stricter, more precise in when you’re willing to give out money.”
Some of the measures FinApp has taken to reach this goal include survey questions in the budget application about how FinApp can better serve student organizations and a more detailed Initial Budget Report.
In addition, since April 2024, GUSA has also partnered with the office of the Vice President of Student Affairs to create a $30,000 Diversity Fund to support cultural and diversity-promoting events at Georgetown.
“The Diversity Fund is explicitly intended to help support groups who’ve had their funding cut through other means and help fill in the gaps to make sure that the cultural programming that’s been a centerpiece of my student experience, at least, is able to continue to the same breadth and depth as it has in years past,” Solki said.
Interviewed club leaders expressed appreciation for FinApp’s changes over the past year, including its efforts to be as communicative as possible with student groups.
“In the past year and a half, we’ve been very in the dark concerning financial requests, guidance from the Media Board,” Hart said. “So it is really nice to see that this budget guide was published and given to us. Because at least for the Caravel, which is a smaller organization, it’s maybe not privy to the same amount of information as the Hoya or the Voice, it’s really nice to have some more formalized guidance.”
For some student organizations, it appears that guidelines from FinApp have offered helpful feedback that has allowed groups to receive a greater portion of their requested funding. For example, in FY25, 84.13% of GPB’s initial budget request was fulfilled. However, for FY26, per FinApp’s advice in the FY25 final budget report, GPB eliminated their film committee and downsized their collaboration with other advisory boards, Silver told the Voice. These efforts have paid off, as this upcoming school year, GPB requested less funding than previous years, and their budget allocation fulfills and even exceeds the request: the organization received 100.07% of the funding they requested.
Looking forward, Solki said that the university’s increased focus on the Capitol Campus poses uncertainties over FinApp and GUSA’s financial structures in the future.
“As the student body continues to grow, especially with the move towards the Capitol Campus that we’re gonna see, I can’t foresee how that will affect how the Student Activities Fee is split up, but a certain amount of money is going to have to start going to priorities Downtown. It might not be while I’m here and it might not be while you’re here, but it’s something that we have to start thinking about now,” Solki said.
Now and in the future, financing and budgeting require a delicate balance between the many student organizations at Georgetown and the FinApp Committee. Solki emphasized that FinApp hopes to support the groups it allocates funds for without being overbearing.
“I don’t think that it’s the responsibility of the FinApp committee to be micromanaging the boards underneath them,” Solki said. “I do believe it is our responsibility to make sure that they’re serving the students underneath them as best they can.”
Editor’s Note: Yunji Yun is an assistant photo editor and Tina Solki is a contributing editor at the Voice.
