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Undergraduate organizations will draw on a larger pool of Harvard College funding this year as a result of a rise in Student Activities Fee payments and the creation of a new funding stream through the Office of Culture and Community.
The pool of SAF funds expanded to approximately $1,296,000, compared to $1,225,000 last year, after fewer students opted out of paying the $200 fee. Some student organizations will also have access to an entirely new funding stream through the OCC, allocated directly from the Dean of Students Office budget without drawing on SAF funds.
The OCC is in the “final stages” of appointing a student advisory board that will distribute a new pool of funds to finance student organizations, according to associate dean of student engagement Jason R. Meier in an interview on Friday.
Meier said that he did not know how much funding would be distributed through the OCC, and College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo did not respond to a comment request. According to Meier, the student advisory board will establish guidelines for distributing the funding after its members are selected.
The change follows the dissolution of the Harvard College Women’s Center, the Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations over the summer. SAF funding was previously divided between the Harvard Undergraduate Association, the College Events Board, House Committees, and the Foundation’s student advisory committee, each of which would divide its share across student organizations and House or College activities.
But since the Foundation was dismantled — and with it, the student advisory committee that distributed SAF money to affinity organizations — the SAF funding pool will now be shared by only the three other recipients. The Foundation advisory committee distributed roughly $70,000 of the total to student groups last year.
It is not yet clear which student groups will be eligible for OCC funding. The Foundation student advisory committee supported “cultural, identity, or affinity organizations.” In the 2023-24 academic year, the last year for which the Foundation’s annual report is publicly accessible, funding recipients included performing arts groups like Eleganza and Ghungroo, advocacy groups including the Palestine Solidarity Committee, and a list of racial and cultural organizations.
The HUA — Harvard College’s student government — announced at its general assembly meeting on Sunday that its allocation of the SAF was $606,000, a 16 percent increase from last year. The HUA voted to adopt its yearly budget allocation and unanimously agreed to give 85.64 percent of its overall budget to clubs, an approximately $60,000 increase from last year.
The CEB received $450,000 in SAF funding, up from $427,500 last year, and the House Committees received $240,000, up from $204,250 last year.
Meier attributed the growth of the SAF pool to a slight rise in the number of freshmen this year, as well as a decrease in SAF opt-outs, which dropped from 959 in 2024 to 932 this year. He also said that the largest group of students who choose to opt out of the SAF are those on full financial aid, followed by those who are on no financial aid.
But requests for SAF funding generally outpace the size of the funding pool — and this year was no exception. The total amount requested by SAF recipient organizations rose from approximately $1.8 million last year to $2,098,000 this year, even without the Foundation, which Meier said was “not an unrealistic number.”
“This year, again, we have seen such an incredible impact of inflation—of tariffs. We know everything is more expensive,” he said. “We know that a simple merch order is 20 percent more expensive this year than it was; we know that catering is more expensive, and so we anticipated the request to be higher.”
Last spring, student organizations requested more than $1 million from the HUA, but the HUA distributed only $238,000 to student organizations.
Unlike last year, when the Dean of Students Office paid more than $43,000 to supplement SAF funds after a rise in opt-outs, the DSO will only distribute money to student organizations through the OCC fund.
—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at claire.simon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.
—Staff writer Nina A. Ejindu can be reached at nina.ejindu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @nina_ejindu.
