Providing money for organizations and clubs on campus is a major function of the Government of the Student Body, and last weekend GSB’s finance committee kicked off its hearings for groups seeking funding through the regular allocation process.

GSB Finance Director Jeremy Williams said the finance committee will be reviewing the budgets of all groups requesting funding.

After organizations submit their budgets, Williams compiles the requests into a budget pack for all finance committee members to review. After that, he said the finance committee will make decisions on funding for the groups.

“Each [committee member] looks over all the budgets, and then each individual group that submitted their budget comes in and the finance committee determines whether or not the stuff they are asking for is valid,” he said.

Williams said each group has to meet certain criteria in order to receive funding.

“Since we are currently over budget, most groups will not end up getting everything they asked for,” he said.

Marcia Johnson, off campus senator and member of the finance committee, said the hearings will continue next weekend.

“We haven’t looked at each individual budget yet, so we don’t know if something is considered over budget,” she said. “Whatever groups are scheduled for [last] weekend are the only budgets we have looked at so far.”

Johnson said the finance committee is using some new criteria to keep allocations within budget.

“We are also trying to make sure groups keep activities on campus as much as possible, so we are cutting funding for conferences,” she said. “That was the general consensus for the first weekend.”

Williams said most groups are considered equally important for funding.

“We don’t really prioritize one group over another,” he said. “However, if we get to the end and are still over budget, we might have to prioritize a little bit.”

Williams said this year’s process is going very much the same as year’s past.

“We have had as much requests this year as last year. Last year, we gave away about $1,188,569.65,” he said. “This year, I would guess that will go up about 2 or 3 percent — we’ll have about $1.2 million to give away.”