The Student Government Association (SGA) recently announced the launch of a $200,000 initiative to further student innovation outside of the classroom.
The new endowed program, dubbed the “Acorn Fund,” is said to support projects that have a positive impact in the community — both nonprofit and for-profit business models are eligible.
Funding for the project came from SGA’s so-called “rollover fund,” or money left over at the end of each academic year. The same pool of capital created the “Fun Fund,” best known for bringing camels to campus on Wednesday — “Hump Day” — last spring.
“While there are many mechanisms of monetary support for students interested in undergraduate research and implementing events for the student body, SGA felt there was a need to provide financial support to individuals pursuing other projects and ideas,” wrote Executive President Joe Incorvia, a senior, in an email.
With any lump sum of money, though, there are bound to be questions about its regulation, said Kyle Porro, a sophomore SGA senator who helped lead the Acorn project. A rigid application process ought to ease student concerns, he added.
“They need to get their acts together,” Porro said. “They need to know this is a lot of money, and they need to document every single thing that they do.”
A consistent criticism of the “Fun Fund” and some other SGA initiatives has been the notion that student’s money could be spend more shrewdly or go to better use.
After taking in student activity fees, SGA distributes funds to organizations in a massive budget process in the beginning of the year. What’s left over after that can be drawn on from organizations that submit special, or one-time, allocation requests. What’s left over at the end of the year goes into SGA’s “rollover fund,” from which they are free to distribute as they see fit.
The “Acorn Fund,” then, does come from the tuition dollars of students — but some of it is tied up in those who have long since graduated. It can lead to misconceptions about how SGA’s budgeting process works, Porro said.
“When people say that this is their tuition dollars going into this, kind of, but it’s also money that has been sitting there and accumulating over the years,” he said.
Though the fund is still in its infancy, some ambitious students have already begun vising how to capture the funds. Junior Kellen Sorenson, along with his partner, junior Robert Paxton, have for some time now been devising a compostable gardening product that they believe will expedite the planting process for trees.
Already, the pair has secured funding from a first-place finish at the Elon-sponsored Triple Impact Challenge last fall, among other investment sources.
“Obviously, if you’re going to start up a company, you need a lot of funding to get going, and this seemed like a really good way to do that,” Sorenson said.”
Successful applicants should not expect to have to deal with much micro-managing on the behalf of SGA, according to Porro, who emphasized a need for minimal regulation after applicants are given grants from the fund. To him, and other members of the eight-person team who out the fund together, accountability is at the core of it all.
“I feel like if you or your group is ready to get into this type of thing, you realize that this is not only a lot of money but you want to make a business out of this,” he said. “You’re not expecting to have that money sit in your pocket. It’s a little different.”
That’s just fine to Sorenson and Paxton, who already have a clear vision and a concrete business plan. They’re only in need of the missing piece: funding.
“If we don’t get the Acorn fund, we would definitely be seeking another source of funding,” Sorenson said. “Especially for a startup, funding is everything, and it’s the most difficult thing. This sort of money isn’t easy to come by.”
Porro and the rest of SGA say they don’t want to get in the way of that kind of vision —but they do want to keep an eye on their investment.
“Since we didn’t want to be watching over them the whole time, we will probably have them come present to the Senate on an infrequent basis,” he said. “But we won’t be asking for weekly updates. It’s not going to be that intense. The thought is that the committee will have picked a group that will be on top of their game and they will not need our guidance — nor will they want our guidance, really.”
The fund, which will begin accepting applications this spring, is open to all majors and all students, save second-semester seniors.
“One thing we’ve really been emphasizing is that this is not a business school initiative,” Porro said. “We want to make sure that this is for any student that might have any interest for anything that might fall into this.”