Ryan Chiao, Senior Photographer

The Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee will close applications for first-round funding this Friday. Student group leaders will be notified of their funding awards, which will total approximately $206,250, or 55 percent of the UOFC’s tentative $375,000 budget, on Monday. 

UOFC Director Andrey Sokolov ’27 hopes to reduce the “somewhat byzantine” nature of the Committee’s operations over the course of this year’s allocations cycles and corresponding appeal periods. Sokolov outlined the steps he has taken to streamline the funding process and prioritize communication between the committee and student leaders, beginning with an internal restructuring of the UOFC. 

This year, each Committee Finance Manager has been assigned two to three specific categories of student groups to guide through the allocations process. Sokolov was inspired to implement this policy by former UOFC Director Jad Bataha ’24, who oversaw the committee during the 2021-22 academic year and implemented a similar system; it has not been in place for the past few funding years. 

“I want to ensure that managers are assigned as point people when clubs have questions regarding the actual allocation process. This does not mean that managers are going to be reviewing the funding applications only for those categories. So the review process will be impartial,” Sokolov told the News. 

Sokolov also hopes to encourage more communication between student organization consultants — or SOCs — and finance managers, enabling the UOFC to receive more feedback on the club funding application process. 

SOCs are upperclassmen who are hired by the Yale College Dean’s Office to assist student leaders in all aspects of running a club. 

“Each of us is assigned around 20 organizations we cover and then we basically are their point of contact. We cover everything from undergraduate regulations that [clubs] have to abide by, down to helping them manage their budgets,” explained SOC Rachel Dai ’26. 

Since every club applying for funding is now assigned to both an SOC and a UOFC finance manager, it is more feasible for the two organizations to work together. 

Ali Otuzoglu ’27, the finance manager for arts, performance, comedy and dance groups, described that more collaboration between the UOFC and SOCs will allow both organizations to better support students. Otuzoglu is also a staff reporter at the News.

“Every finance manager is connected with a designated SOC that they’re in communication with to give the best advice possible to club members. If I get a question that would be in their area of expertise, I would direct the students to speak with them,” Otuzoglu said.

Sokolov hopes that this increased ease of communication will help inform and improve UOFC policy.  

In pursuit of better transparency about the allocation process, Sokolov has released a funding application guide, which lays out the steps that club treasurers must follow to apply for funding, and a funding framework document, which explains the UOFC’s rationale behind fulfilling specific club funding requests.

“It was very important for me to have everything in a place where I’m able to update it very easily,” Sokolov said. “The UOFC is more than happy to expand on it, and expand on any questions that treasurers may have.”

Last year, the YCC also mandated that the UOFC release data on club funding, allowing the student body to observe how UOFC funding is being distributed. According to Sokolov, last year’s report was done manually. Sokolov has created a new team of programmers who are tasked with automating this process in order to increase the UOFC’s transparency.

Despite the abundance of expanded transparency and communication efforts pursued by the UOFC, it is impossible for every club leader to be fully satisfied at the conclusion of each funding cycle. According to last year’s End of Year report compiled by former UOFC director Ursula Hardianto ’25 and Sokolov, club leaders requested $1,141,000 across the three funding cycles, while only $370,000, or 32.4 percent, was budgeted for UOFC allocations. 

Club leaders who do not receive the funding they request during any particular funding round are able to submit an appeal application to the committee. For this year’s first-round allocations, treasurers are able to submit an appeal as soon as the awards are released. 

Sokolov encouraged club leaders to “proactively” reach out to their finance managers for help navigating the appeal process, since only 15 percent of the UOFC budget is available for appeals. Additionally, a unanimous decision is required to grant each appeal award, meaning that the UOFC will have to be more stringent when evaluating these requests. 

This year, along with their funding, the UOFC will provide feedback and commentary, detailing the reasons why a request was not granted. 

“This year’s process will be very comprehensive when it comes to providing feedback on why a certain expense might not have been fully allocated,” Solokov stated. 

Dai, who is the former treasurer of the Urban Philanthropic Fund at Yale, has been through multiple UOFC allocations rounds. Dai said that certain kinds of funding requests, especially those concerning events or community-focused work, are more likely to be funded than others. 

“I would say it was definitely a trial and error process of learning throughout each round, and I definitely learned that there are specific things that the UOFC is more or less willing to fund. They really like events or things that are open to the Yale community,” Dai said. 

This year, the UOFC will offer four rounds of funding, one more than last year.