The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) at the University of Connecticut recently stated that one-third of their budget for Tier II student organizations has been spent for the 2025-26 funding year. The USG funding staff say they’re making sure student club leaders are aware of their funding policies and allowances.
“We understand that Tier II funding has been difficult in the past,” said Billy Lipinski, the comptroller for USG. “We share the concerns, and want to make this as painless as possible. We want the funding to last as long as possible so everyone can participate.”
USG financially supports Tier II registered student organizations (RSOs), a group of clubs which the Department of Student Activities describes as “requiring a larger degree of structure and advisement” compared to the simpler Tier I designation. These groups, which have regular meetings and may participate in events and competitions, do not receive direct funding from student fees. Instead, a USG committee decides to give Tier II groups funding for specific purposes.
There are over 400 active registered student organizations which are considered Tier II, many of which have already received funding from USG. According to the funding policies, each club is eligible to receive up to $15,000 for requests with a wide range of eligibility requirements. This year, USG scheduled approximately $900,000 for Tier II use.
“Out of [about] $1 million, seeing $350,000 spent is kind of scary, I get that,” Lipinski said. “We’re not terribly concerned…we anticipated these larger totals for the fall compared to the spring.”
Lipinski said that USG opened up the request system in July for groups looking to receive funds for the start of the school year, based on a six-week deadline period accounted for in the policies. The fall semester form, he said, closes on October 28th.
“We want RSOs to be diligent and get their requests in, but don’t want to scare anyone,” he said.
The spring semester request form, allowing for the six-week period, is set to open on Dec. 9.
Part of the USG funding staff’s concern, according to the comptroller, is the potential for club leaders to wish to request funds, but feel that the process may be too complicated or competitive.
“We know that there were a lot of Tier II clubs that knew how to request funding and use the forms [from prior years], but there are some who are new or maybe do not know, so we want to be transparent as possible,” Lipinski said. “It’s to get them knowledgeable about the process…We’re already seeing requests from clubs that have never done it before.”
In March, USG had to close the Tier II funding system after exceeding the available budget. “We made some pretty drastic cuts to the rest of USG’s budget [to accommodate Tier II funding],” USG said at that time.
“If a request looks good, we’re going to fund it… when we’re efficient, we pass funds really quickly, so we don’t want to deny a group’s request in fear of running out,” Lipinski said.
Changes were introduced to USG’s overall budget and funding policies this year, as part of a wider initiative to maximize the group’s spending on behalf of students, namely in travel and coaching expenses for club sports teams – considered Tier II organizations.
“We ran a report back in [the] spring, just kind of identifying some of the big funding categories that were taking up a large percentage of the Tier II funding budget,” Lipinski told The Daily Campus in September. “What we found was that travel, coaching, those are two really big-ticket items.”
USG maintains a staff and committee dedicated to the disbursement of funding to Tier II organizations, a group that Lipinski celebrated the work of so far in the academic year.
“I campaigned on fiscal transparency…What’s actually my favorite part of the job is when I’m able to sit down with students and work out how we can support clubs,” he said. “One thing I am really proud of is our funding staff this year, we have an excellent group.”
Student club leaders can also make use of USG’s funding resources webpage, Lipinski said, to learn more about the process and policies behind Tier II funding and to access the digital request system.
“I always encourage students to reach out to me,” he said. “We want to be as transparent and honest as possible.”
Certain student organizations at UConn are not funded by USG. Tier I groups, some of which are registered, are not eligible for funding but may hold meetings.
Tier III organizations are independent, larger groups which possess a high accountability to a large constituency of students. The limited roster of six Tier III organizations, which includes both USG and The Daily Campus, receives funding directly from every undergraduate student through a student activity fee; USG gets $45 of the $96 total fee.