The Undergraduate Council of Students is currently accepting applications for an inaugural award from its New Initiatives Fund. The council is offering $500 to finance a student organization or project that seeks to improve the University or greater Providence community.
"The types of projects we are trying to fund are projects that move the Brown community forward in a very productive way, that are widely reaching, that are community-focused," said UCS Communications Chair Sam Gilman '15. Potential recipients can be student groups or individual students with well thought-out and detailed proposals, he said.
The $500 will likely be awarded to one student group or project, though there is a possibility that UCS will decide to split the money between two recipients, said UCS Treasurer Afia Kwakwa '14. After the April 1 deadline, applications will go through a primary screening to determine finalists, who the council will then interview. The council will hold a general body vote to decide on the recipient of the fund, she said.
The fund, which was proposed last year by the UCS E-Board, will use money from the council's budget, which is allocated each spring for the following year by the Undergraduate Finance Board, Kwakwa said.
"We recognize that UFB is the main funding group, so we're just trying to also show that we have a lot of support as student government for different student groups," she said.
Both official and unofficial campus groups can apply for the New Initiatives Fund, including groups that already receive funding from UFB. Student service groups that do not receive funding from the University may find it particularly useful to apply for supplementary funding, Gilman said.
"As student government, we're representing the school, and we just want to be supportive of different projects or ideas people might have," Kwakwa said. "We want to encourage a bunch of people to apply, to bring up innovative ideas."
Brown Student Agencies recently announced a similar initiative - its Inspire Fund will offer up to $1,000 to support students working on similar projects, The Herald reported March 13.
