The Board of the Social Innovation and Public Service fund has announced plans to fund social justice and service projects by three students and one organization: Tommy Larson (SFS ’13), Kristin Trivelli (NHS ’14), Tyler Eldridge (SFS ’13), and the Hilltop Microfinance Initiative.

SIPS has approved a total of $14,300 in funding of the $1.25 million it was appropriated last year as a part of SAFE Reform. The mandate of SIPS is to allocate at least $100,000 about $45,000-$65,000 each year to student social justice and service projects. The committee received 25 applications, which, according to SIPS Board members, is a dramatic response from the Georgetown community.

“We were blown away by the initial response to SIPS,” said Tyler Sax (COL ’13), Managing Director of SIPS. “The interest from students and alumni has been outstanding.”

The SIPS Board selected the group of students based on the quality and creativity of the proposals. According to Sax, the central considerations involved the expected impact on the the local and global community, Georgetown’s campus, and the student themselves:

Innovative approaches – Does this project take a new approach to problem solving? How does it attempt to “think outside the box?”
Impact on the Georgetown community – How will this project help to further the culture of public service among Georgetown students?
Impact on the applicant – How will the applicant demonstrate personal growth as a result of becoming a SIPS partner?

Although three of four grant recipients plan overseas trips to serve international communities, the committee did not prioritize international projects over domestic ones. “We have not put an emphasis on international projects,” Sax said. “This is just another indication that Georgetown students are always thinking big and that we truly see ourselves as part of a global community.”

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Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee met once again to finalize the referendum for the proposed uses of the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment. [Here's a recap of the first part of the meeting.]

The allocations are as follows (the draft referendum is reproduced below):

• Georgetown Energy’s solar panels and revolving green fund: $250,000
• New South Student Center: $2,048,412. This will fund the southern terrace and the first floor renovation with an additional $206,763 of interest earned on the account.
• SIPS fund: $1,250,000 plus the any additional interest after NSSC is fully funded.

Here’s the rationale the comittee provided on each proposal.

Georgetown Energy

The issue was whether to fund it at the original request of $163,398, which the endowment commission recommended, or at $300,000, which Georgetown Energy requested in their latest proposal.

According to Georgetown Energy, they found that the original $163,000 requested wasn’t feasible because, “Facilities is great at finding things they don’t want to pay for.” That amount would be insufficient for all 43 townhouses, and that’s not considering the revolving green fund.

As a whole, the committee, like the endowment commission before them, had no qualms with funding GE. More so, their only issue from Tuesday, GE’s relationship with SIPS, was clarified in an additional attachment, which clarified how the revolving green fund would exist should SIPS either fail the referendum or run out of money.

The committee decided on $250,000 as a half-way point between the two numbers.

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Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee met to review the final drafts of the proposed uses of the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment. Starting last night but continuing tonight, Finapp will decide how much of the $3.5 million to allocate to each of the three proposals (the Social Innovation and Public Service fund, the New South Student Center, and the Georgetown Energy solar panel project) and will draft the referendum that will be put to the student body in late January.

This discussion is the almost-culmination of last year’s SAFE reform that declared the endowment defunct and the resulting endowment commission that recommended the uses for the money. The commission’s primary recomendations were for $170,000 to Georgetown Energy and $3.2 million to Healy Pub, but with the premature demise of Healy Pub, a chunk of money is left for the secondary recommendations, SIPS and NSSC. Let’s break down the proposals (actual proposals are at the end):

Georgetown Energy solar panels and revolving green fund

Originally, Georgetown Energy pitched installing solar panels on 43 university owned townhouses through a private developer. This project, besides promoting sustainable energy, would channel the profits made from selling the energy back to Pepco into the GUSA Fund. They originally requested approximately $163,000 with the promise that in 20 years, the solar panels would be turning over true profits.

However, Georgetown Energy ran into some trouble. Anticipating rises in prices stemming from things like the university not having a map of the electricity meters on townhouses, the group is now requesting $300,000. As a bigger problem, the university recently told the group that most of the townhouse roofs can’t support solar panels without renovation, which the university doesn’t have the resources for.

In lieu of placing all the solar panels on the townhouses at once, Georgetown Energy proposed installing solar panels on the seven ready-to-go townhouses and then the creation of a “revolving green fund” for the leftover money. This fund would be a separate pot of money under the purview of SIPS [we'll get to the details later], and it would fund either the latest technology of solar panels or student driven eco-friendly projects [similar to SIPS, but again, more on that later].

And one more catch: a group of students, namely Evan Abrams (SFS ’12) and Tyler Eldridge (COL ’13), claim that they came up with the revolving green fund plan and that Georgetown Energy took the idea, Social Network style. The representatives from Georgetown Energy deny any such thievery, and Finapp chair Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) said the issue has little bearing on the comittee’s job of drafting a referendum.

Overall, the committee members unanymously approved of the solar panel project in its current iteration, but some members expressed some uncertainty about their partnership with SIPS.

The other two projects are after the jump Read the rest of this entry »