Many local organizations are one step closer to receiving funding.

Analysis of Social Services Evaluation Team, a Story County organization that distributes funds from several groups, spent its Thursday night meeting discussing funding for local organizations.

ASSET distributes money from several groups: Government of the Student Body, city of Ames, Story County Board of Supervisors, state of Iowa’s Department of Human Services and United Way.

In a previous meeting, the committee members were divided into four panels, each of which were assigned an organization to make suggestions and recommendations for.

During Thursday’s meeting, each panel discussed their findings and recommendations based on the group’s research of the assigned agency. Panel one was the first to explain their recommendations.

Deb Schildroth, community services director for Story County and member of panel one, said the county is considering a $250,000 budget cut to mental health and developmental disabilities programs.

The cut is a result of the county having maxed out property tax dollars to use and the state not giving additional money to be used with the county funds.

“This is a problem statewide,” she said.

Schildroth said she was pleased with the outcome of her panel, having an overall increase of 4 percent.

Sheila Lundt, assistant city manager and member of panel two, had a similar outcome.

The money shifted around between funders and agencies, but stayed relatively the same, Lundt said.

Panel three also had relatively small changes from last year, said Annette Dunn, DHS staff member and member of panel three.

Panel four gave more money this year for the most part, said Frankee Oleson, executive director of the United Way of Story County and member of panel four.

GSB transferred $3,000 from panel four to panel three. The reason for the extra funding was because YWCA did not request any funds from GSB this year.

YWCA did not qualify for GSB ASSET funding as outlined in GSB priorities, said Sonja Hultstrand, GSB volunteer and senior in finance. YWCA’s funding will go through GSB’s regular allocations instead.

The proposed recommendations were passed with one amendment. Ryan Myers, GSB treasurer and senior in accounting, added $100 to ACCESS rape relief crisis intervention, bringing that total to $1,000 and GSB’s excess funds to $123.

Hultstrand was pleased with this year’s process and said agencies usually fight for every last GSB penny.

“We had enough to hold what they had or give a slight increase,” she said.

Myers said the only instances that funds were decreased was because of a request by the agencies.

“We didn’t decrease any unless they asked for a decrease,” he said.