Article I - Grant Making Committee — The Green Initiative Fund at Hunter College

Bylaws for the green initiative fund at hunter college of cuny

May 2015

Article I - Grant Making committee

Section 1.1 – Duties of the Grant Making Committee

The Grant Making Committee (GMC) has authority over TGIF and all of its functions. The duties of the Grant Making Committee are to promote TGIF and solicit proposals, review project applications, and to determine the allocation of funds to eligible projects. While project proposals may be distributed to GMC members via email in advance of meetings, each proposal must be discussed at an in-person meeting, prior to voting on the allocation of funds. Each committee member has an equal vote regarding the allocation of funds, and decisions made by a simple majority shall be implemented, unless otherwise specified in the TGIF bylaws or if such a decision is in violation of College or University policy.

Section 1.2 – Appointments

As per the referendum, the Chairperson of the Hunter College Sustainability Council (HCSC), the Director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities (CISC), the Chair Person of Geography, Administrative/staff member from Geography, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) President & Executive Board, and the Graduate Student Association (GSA) President appoint members to the Committee.

The referendum calls for the appointments to be made as follows:
The Chairperson of Geography will appoint: 1 faculty member
The Chairperson of HCSC shall appoint: 1 student; 1 ; 1 administration/facilities representative: 1 faculty/administrative representative
The Director of CISC shall appoint: 1 non-faculty staff member of CISC
The President of USG shall appoint: 1 USG E-Board or Senate member
The Executive Board of USG shall appoint: 1 non-USG student
The President of GSA shall appoint: 1 GSA Member
The College Association will appoint: 1 Administrative/staff member

If the student organizations (USG and GSA) do not appoint student reps then the Chairperson of HCSC shall appoint a student representative.

If the appointee’s position with the appointing body ends prior to the end of their one year term with the GMC, the appointee can serve out the year, as long as they continue to act as a liaison to the appointing body.

Section 1.3 – Terms of Office

Appointments are to be made by appointing parties no later than Aug 1st for the following academic year, and are to be served from Aug 1st through June 30th of that respective year. A committee member may serve for longer than a year, though may be removed from the GMC by a unanimous vote made by the rest of the committee for failure to attend meetings, conflict of interest, or other appropriate reasons. If a committee member is removed or resigns the replacement would be decided and made by the original appointing body. The replacement committee member would serve on the GMC for the remainder of the year. Existing members can be reappointed by the original appointing body.

Section 1.4 – Committee Structure

The GMC will have one officer a Chair. The member appointed by CISC will be the GMC Chair, and this person will preside over and facilitate the meetings. In the absence of the Chair the Administrator will preside over the meeting and inform the chair of meeting outcomes. The TGIF Administrator will serve as the Secretary for the GMC. The Administrator/Secretary will be responsible for recording and archiving the meeting minutes.

A $300 stipend, per semester, will be earmarked for the four student members (two appointees from the USG, one from HCSC, and one from the GSA) of the committee. Under the supervision of the Grant-making Committee Chairperson and the Grant Administrator, the student members of the committee will be responsible for 20 hours of outreach, per semester. In addition, the student members will be required to attend all the GMC meetings, and actively participate in document review in between meeting.

Section 1.5 – Committee Meetings

The Committee will meet a minimum of twice per semester. The first meeting at the start of the semester will be an Executive Session to vote on funding projects. This meeting is closed therefore if committee members want to bring a non-member to the meeting they should email the committee in advance with their guest’s name and reason for attending. No alternates will be selected for committee positions. If a committee member in unable to attend an executive session they must submit their votes by proxy. In order for a vote to be passed there must be at least 7 voting members present. A second Executive Session will be called if all of the proposals are not voted on in the first meeting. The second meeting will be an Open Session held at the end of the semester to review student evaluations, lessons learned, next steps, etc.