Special Allocations are meant to provide funding for student organizations or initiatives who fulfill both of the following requirements:

1. First, one of the following three conditions must be met:
   1. The initiative, or the organization more broadly, is new to campus. Initiatives falling into this category must be being run for the first time this year. Organizations falling into this category must have been established after JFC funding applications for this fiscal year were closed.
   2. The initiative incurred unexpected expenses that were not the result of fiscal irresponsibility. In this case, Senate may fund the unexpected expenses, but will not fund any expenses which had been anticipated.
   3. Initiatives or organizations which are ineligible to, or did not, receive funding from the JFC - provided that the organization or initiative does not run afoul of the CMU Activities Fee Policy.
2. And second, Senate must determine that the undergraduate community will benefit substantially from the organization or initiative being funded.

If your organization or initiative satisfies both requirements, great! Fill out the Common Funding Application to apply for a special allocation. Please note that you will be asked to provide a full, itemized budget of all of your expenditures for the event, and the specific line items for which you are requesting Senate funding.

After submitting your application, you can expect the following:

1. An email from the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, within one week of submitting your application, confirming receipt.
2. The Finance Committee will consider your application at its next regular meeting. These are usually Sundays at 5pm, but this will not always be the case. If there are circumstances which make it impossible for the committee to discuss your application within two weeks of receipt, the committee chair will reach out to you to explain the situation.
3. At their regular meeting, if it has no questions, the committee will hold a vote on your application. If members of the committee have questions about the application, the chair will email you those questions within two days of the meeting, and you will have until the following meeting to respond. In some circumstances, the committee may ask you or a representative from your organization or initiative to attend their next regular meeting to answer questions. Either way, the Finance Committee will typically have made a recommendation on your application within three weeks of when you submitted it. This recommendation could be outright approval, outright rejection, or a partial approval (i.e. if you submitted a request for $500, the committee could approve $300 of it).
4. Your application will then be formally approved or rejected as follows:
   1. If the Finance Committee recommended less than $2,500, the Senate executive committee will normally vote on your allocation the following day.
   2. If the Finance Committee recommended more than $2,500, the general body will normally discuss and vote on your allocation the following Thursday, although, due to agenda time constraints, this is not always possible. If the general body considers your application, you will be invited by the Finance Committee chair to attend the general body meeting to answer questions from senators.
5. If your allocation is approved, the Finance Committee chair will email you to let you know the allocation amount and ask you for receipts, invoices, or other proof of purchase. (This is just so we know the allocation was spent on what we agreed it would be.) After that, the funds will be transferred to your organization’s account; if you are not a recognized organization, it may be reimbursed to you personally.

Please allow four weeks for the entire process, application to decision, to be completed.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the chair of the Finance Committee. Medha Palavalli, at senate-finance@andrew.cmu.edu!