Student Union will now manage the CarShare fund for student groups that travel off campus.

The fund was previously subsidized out of the Student Union (SU) budget but administered by the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement. As part of the Gephardt Institute’s decision to redefine their office’s campus role, they will no longer be in charge of the program.

SU plans to run the CarShare program in the same way as it was run under the Gephardt Institute, with a few minor changes.

“Before, we would just give Gephardt the lump sum, Gephardt would administer it, and then groups wouldn’t really have to budget for that,” Shelly Gupta, SU’s former VP of Finance who managed the transition last year, said. “But now, just because we need to allocate the money somewhere, groups are just going to have to budget for the funds they need, and SU will fund them.”

Student groups were told to include requests for CarShare funds when writing their SU budgets last semester, but not all groups managed to do this.

According to current SU VP of Finance Ariel Ashie, groups who failed to include CarShare fund requests in their budgets will be required to appeal for it. Ashie said SU is committed to ensuring all student groups in need of funding will be able to receive it.

“We are making sure that our requirements aren’t something that are hindering groups,” Ashie said. “We are making sure that it is as inclusive as possible.”

In order to further improve accessibility in the program, SU used data from previous years to pick 15 of the most active student groups to be enrolled in a pilot program, which would streamline financing.

“We got the data from Gephardt every year about the groups that use the fund, and it is really the same groups using it every week, multiple times a week,” Gupta said. “All the groups that go off campus to work with younger students in the St. Louis community, those are the groups that use it a lot.”

Currently, student groups pay the initial CarShare reservation fees out of their own pockets, and can apply for a reimbursement later. According to the CarShare program’s website, reimbursements can take 15-20 business days to be sent, which can be a burden for student groups that frequently make expensive reservations.

The pilot program would eliminate this need for an out of pocket payment by allowing SU to directly pay for the reservations.

“Groups will be able to book the CarShare through a program that Enterprise is building for us,” Ashie said. “They will be able to use a job code, and that billing will go straight through our system. [It] will result in an invoice, and will have a monthly billing period.”

Outside of changing how the program is financed, SU plans to continue supporting all of the groups that received funds in previous years, as well as make it easier for new groups to apply for funding.

“As long as you have the money budgeted, you can use the CarShare like any other group,” Gupta said. “The one extra step is budgeting for the CarShare hours, but I think that also adds a layer of accountability for groups too. So I think that is a good change.”