Ellie Park, Multimedia Managing Editor

The Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee will reinstate a “collaboration round” in its funding allocation process, awarding up to $5,000 to student organizations working together on a shared campus-wide event or project. 

The initiative aims to simplify the allocation process for joint programming. It comes alongside ongoing UOFC efforts to bolster its own accessibility, as well as establish further coordination between itself and student organizations. 

“The collaboration round is designed to allow organizations to combine their efforts in implementing vast events and initiatives on our campus,” wrote UOFC Director Andrey Sokolov ’27. “This is in contrast to typical rounds, which usually fund regular club programming.” 

Proposals for joint campus-wide initiatives will be reviewed by a UOFC subcommittee. A separate, fourth round will also be held. During this period, student organizations can apply to receive funding for events and projects hosted exclusively by one group, as opposed to multiple. 

The “collaboration round” was first implemented during the pandemic. According to Sokolov, the UOFC’s operations were temporarily suspended last year, with the committee hosting only one round of funding, which did not include the collaboration round. 

“It is important to note that [during the pandemic] the funds utilized for the collaboration round were made up of UOFC surplus funding of $100,000,” said Sokolov. “This year, we do not have such a surplus and as such are operating with a much more limited budget.”

The UOFC is the primary source of funding for registered undergraduate organizations. According to Dean of Student Affairs Hannah Peck, the majority of the committee’s assets come from the student activities fee.

Students may request to opt out of the fee at the beginning of the fall term. The student activities fee for next year will increase from $125 to $175, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis told the News. 

“We recognized that with the growth of the student body and the growth of different interests and student organizations, both culturally based ones and interest based ones, we were a little short on funding for student organizations,” said Lewis. 

Sokolov echoed these remarks. He pointed to the increasing amount of average funds requested by individual student organizations and the expanding number of YCDO-affiliated student organizations each year. 

Ruby Lee ’27 — the treasurer for the Society Of Women Engineers — expressed excitement about the round. She noted that the organization often felt “siloed in our own space,” despite events being open to all members of the community and being advertised as such. 

“By the nature of the funding, we have to reach out to other clubs, and I think that’s definitely a very good way to expand our audience to these events,” said Lee. 

Applications for the collaboration round are due on Feb. 28.