Student groups and their piggy banks will find themselves affected by broad-reaching changes announced at Student Union’s first-ever Budget Open Forum on Friday.

One key new policy is the “90 percent rule,” under which a student group may only be considered for increased funding if they had used more than 90 percent of their Student Union money the previous year. Starting in the spring of 2015, groups that use 90 percent or less can only be funded as much money as they spent in the previous year.

The new rule is part of an effort to more efficiently allocate the 1 percent of each student’s tuition that is distributed by Student Union, following this year’s unusually high carry-forward budget composed largely of money unspent by student groups. SU officials hope that the change will encourage student groups to make full use of all the money they receive from SU each year.

In addition to being a space for announcing new rules for student groups, the open forum was designed to let students who are not affiliated with Student Union ask a panel of Treasury representatives questions about the allocation process.

Sophomore Kenneth Sng, Treasury’s Budget Committee chair, said that he hoped the 90 percent rule would minimize the swelling carry-forward, or allocated money that returns to the SU budget after it has not been spent. He also hoped the policy change would reward student groups that had spent all of their allocated budget, rather than padding their appeal to Treasury.

“This is a better use of the Student Activities Fee…[The carry-forward] can really be put to use for the other students,” Sng said during his presentation at the event.

Sng said extenuating circumstances, such as a speaker cancellation, would be considered in the implementation of the 90 percent rule.

Other changes include the introduction of a $150 budget per year for Category III groups, which had previously received no SU funding. Sng also said that printing and publishing clubs are exempt from the 90 percent rule and will be funded through a different procedure.

Senior Christina Ge, who attended the forum, felt that the 90 percent rule would lend a degree of objectivity to allocation decisions.

“Having a set rule is probably going to help,” Ge said. “You don’t have to have those value judgments…It’s not a gray area anymore.”

Ge said it was helpful to see inside a process that divides about $300,000 among 245 student groups every year. She has been a part of several SU-funded groups and has felt that the process was unclear.

“It’s always very difficult when the treasurer comes back and reports and says, ‘Oh well, we just don’t have enough funds,’” Ge said.

“This process just doesn’t seem as separated and mysterious,” she added.

Senior Andrew Sgarro, the current president and former treasurer of the SU-funded group Teach English as a Second Language, found the event a positive step toward transparency in the allocation process.

“I came because it was always kind of a guessing game…[to see] what you’ll get money for,” he said. “I thought that this would be able to explain it a lot more, which I think it did.”

Ge said the allocation process felt much more straightforward after she attended the event.

“I think it makes it clear that they’re involved in our interests and that they’re not just reading our requests on a form—they’re actually invested in what we want,” Ge said.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the funding for Category III groups as $150 per semester as opposed to per year. Student Life regrets the error.