Everyone who awards any funding to undergraduate and graduate students and student organizations at their request, and at the funder's discretion, in support of summer study abroad, senior thesis research, independent projects, research, conferences, internships, and group projects on and off campus should be doing so via SAFE.

The following activities and funds should not be entered in SAFE:

• Prizes to recognize achievement
• Salary (including casual hourly appointments, paid internships and assistantships)
• Financial Aid and Work/Study funds
• Financial assistance, including emergency assistance or hardship funding
• Payments that are entirely external to the University (never touching University accounts or administered by University departments; for example – funding provided by family; raised by the student via fundraisers; completely external support such as Rotary Club, or another philanthropic/non-profit organization; direct internship payment from hosting organization)
• Purchases of equipment that will be used by the student but remain the property of the department (including reimbursements to students who purchase materials that are considered to be department property).

Students searching for funding will see the opportunities for which they are eligible based on the criteria set by the funding office administrators when the opportunity was created.

The most common reasons why a student can't find an opportunity include:

• The opportunity is set up as a funder-initiated opportunity. Funder-Inititated opportunities do not appear in student searches. If the funder wants the opportunity to appear in student searches, they should create a new opportunity and select "student-initiated" in the Funding Request Initiation Type field. (Note: once the opportunity is created, this field cannot be changed).
• The student's project is a different activity type from the opportunity's. If your funding office would fund more than one kind of activity, then your department should create a funding opportunity for each activity type. This will ensure that students will find the funding opportunity in their searches regardless of their project's activity type.  
• There is another criteria mismatch such as duration, concentration, location of project, or class year eligibility.

Some funders think that because they only offer funding to their department's concentrators or because only a small number of students would ultimately be eligible that they should not put the opportunity in SAFE. Not so! Whenever possible, create a student-initiated opportunity and allow eligible students to apply. Only eligible students (based on the criteria you set) will see the opportunity. There are times when funders may choose to set their criteria very broadly to attract a large number of eligible applicants. There are other times when funders may need to set very narrow criteria in order to limit the applicant pool to the students meeting the parameters of the funding guidelines.

Every department, center, program, or office who awards any funding to undergraduate students should be recording this funding in SAFE. It matters not whether the funder gives $50 or $5000 to 1 student or 15 students. There is no award too big or too small to not be included in SAFE.

There are 2 ways funding can be awarded:

• With a Student-Initiated opportunity the funding office creates a an opportunity and specifies the eligibility criteria. Funders can narrow the pool of eligible applicants by specifying factors such as type of activity, class year, major, certificate enrollment, travel destination, duration of travel, and more. Students who match the criteria specified will see the opportunity in their SAFE search results and apply for the funding via SAFE. The SAFE application can and should take the place of an application process outside of SAFE. The student can apply for funding from multiple sources in SAFE with the same application they are using for your funding opportunity.
• With a Funder-Initiated Opportunity, a student or group is accepted into a particular activity directly by the funding office. This might include a department or program sponsored internship or special project for which the student or group applies. The funding opportunity and selection process is managed outside of the SAFE portal, and only entered in SAFE when the funding decision has already been made. Some find the Funder-Initiated format useful for posting awards for special circumstances when chairs or faculty decide to issue an award to a specific student outside of the SAFE system.