Financial Officer: Lani Marsden (lmarsden@stanford.edu)
Amount Petitioned: $32,645
Full Budget

What is the mission and purpose of your student group?

The Stanford American Indian Organization strives to create and
maintain programming intended to inform the larger Stanford
community about Native American, Alaska Native and Native
Hawaiian culture, history and contemporary issues.  In addition
to reaching out to Stanford to educate others and foster a sense
of community, SAIO serves as an umbrella organization from which
various cultural groups receive funding.  Such groups include the
Dine? (Navajo) Club, Alaska Native Student Association, Hui o
Hawaii, Cherokee Club and other such organizations with cultural,
community-building, and outreach goals.

Why are you requesting Special Fees?

SAIO is asking for Special Fees to help defray a portion (a
little less than a half) of our operating costs.  Because we are
a student organization dedicated to educating the Stanford
community about various aspects of Native culture, we feel that
SAIO does its part to contribute to the quality of life and
community here at Stanford.  As such, we feel that Special Fee
offers SAIO an option for funding that will continue to enable us
to make this contribution to the quality of Stanford as an
institution an as a community.

What are the three largest line item requests in your budget and why?

The three largest line items in our budget are: honoraria,
refreshments and travel.  We use honoraria to bring Native
speakers to campus from various tribal homelands.  Since many of
our speakers are elders, traveling from across the country to
come to Stanford presents many of them with a hardship. 
Presenting gifts, which we pay for with honoraria money, allows
us show our appreciation to the speakers for sharing their
knowledge in addition to making the long trek many of them take
to the Farm.

The next largest line item is refreshments, which we use to
provide food and drinks for our SAIO meetings and to provide
refreshments for the attendees of our speaker/.workshop events,
which are open to the entire student body, that we host
throughout the year.  Finally, there is travel, which we use to
subsidize representatives from SAIO to attend well-known and
respected Native leadership conferences.  Since these conferences
provide a valuable service to SAIO and the larger Stanford
community by giving young Natives leadership tools and skills
that they share in presentations upon their return, we are
requesting Special Fee money to help SAIO subsidize these events.

If you applied for Special Fees last year, is there an increase in the
amount you're seeking this year?  If so, why?

Yes, there is a 9.57% increase in our request for this year. 
This is because last year, we decreased our request by 17%.  We
are trying to raise programming funding to 2002-2003 levels.