Annual budgets

ELIGIBILITY

Annual budgets are only available to fully chartered organizations which excludes those with temporary charters, non-chartered, or inactive organizations.

SUBMISSION

Budgets are submitted to the Finance Chair, Omar Jaber, at studentsenate@smu.edu, by the due date and time. Make sure your requests are in line with the Senate Finance Committee Standards.

THE PROCESS

The Finance Committee will hold meetings with each organization for their annual budget, so they may give context for each event and line item. The Committee will then amend and approve annual budgets. The Finance Chair may write notes to explain why the line item was rejected, urge the organization to come to weekly with more information, etc. All annual budgets are presented to Student Senate during Chamber for approval.

Click HERE for Fall 2024 – Spring 2025 Annual Budgets

RULES FOR SEMESTER BUDGETS

All of the instructions for the annual budgets are provided on the template. Be sure to completely follow all the instructions and rules. The following are strict rules that must be followed in order for Finance Committee to consider your organization’s semester budget:

  1. You must use the template provided by the Finance Chair. You cannot use a template from a previous semester. If you do not use the template provided, your annual budget will not be considered.

  2. You cannot change the cell references. Simply fill out the excel spreadsheet. We recommend you do not copy and paste from past budgets because that can mess up the cell references. If you change the cell references, your semester budget will not be considered.

  3. You must name the annual budget correctly. For example, imagine that Student Senate is turning in an annual budget for approval. “Student Senate” would be the name of the semester budget. Do not shorten the name or use an acronym. You will be penalized if the semester budget is not named correctly.

  4. You must provide attendance numbers for proposed events taken from SMU 360. If you inflate attendance, you will be penalized. Without the correct attendance number, we cannot approve line items or money requested for the event.

TIPS FOR ANNUAL BUDGETS

  1. Clearly label “General Body Meeting Food” on the semester budget if you are asking for food for meetings. We recommend having it on the miscellaneous tab.

  2. Be as specific as possible in the line items. The Finance Committee can understand the event better with your line item description.

  3. Fill out the event description at the bottom of the “Event” sheet. Talk about the background, traditions, programming, planning, or anything else that is important.