HUA Funding Disbursements Stall Again Amid Dispute With Harvard Federal Credit Union

The Harvard Undergraduate Association’s spring funding disbursements to student organizations have been delayed for the second consecutive semester — this time after Co-Treasurers Daniel Zhao ’28 and Rachel M. Fields ’27 attempted to use an online payment feature that the Harvard Federal Credit Union says was never designed to handle mass transfers.

Zhao and Fields announced the delays in a Saturday mass email to student organizations, writing that the HFCU’s internal transfer system had “broken” and that “this issue right now is out of our control.”

But the HFCU disputed that characterization. In a statement, Chief Operating Officer Tom Montilli wrote that there was no system outage or failure on the credit union’s side. The online transfer function the co-treasurers attempted to use is not built to support the volume and complexity of processing hundreds of student organizations, Montilli wrote — a limitation he described as native to the system, not the result of a technical error.

The co-treasurers had hoped the online transfer function would allow them to bypass the HFCU’s slower manual process, in which student government leaders submit a file of disbursement requests and the credit union’s Deposit Servicing team processes them from a back-office environment.

That manual method — which the HFCU established several years ago after previous student government treasurers encountered the same limitations with the self-service option — has been the standard process for disbursing HUA funds.

To prepare for the spring semester, Zhao and Fields eliminated Venmo and Zelle as payment options and moved student organizations onto HFCU accounts to use an internal transfer system.

“Everyone is, at the very least, has either filled out an application or is talking to the bank at the moment to switch,” Zhao said.

Under the manual system, the HFCU’s “employees are limited” and juggle other banking responsibilities, meaning disbursements typically take several weeks to process, according to Zhao. The online system would have let the co-treasurers handle transfers themselves, and Zhao said he and Fields were willing to spend “24 hours going through this” to get funds out quickly.

But Fields and Zhao only contacted the HFCU about the internal transfer function “late last week,” Montilli wrote, at which point the credit union informed them the feature would not support their needs.

Montilli pointed to a gap in communication during the transition in student government leadership as a source of friction. In prior years, new treasurers were typically onboarded through handoffs from outgoing leadership and direct meetings with the HFCU’s Deposit Servicing team, he wrote. But in this case, he added, the credit union had “more limited interaction” with the current treasurers.

The HUA Finance Team pushed back on that account, writing in a statement that while meetings with the Deposit Servicing team specifically had begun recently, they have been in frequent contact with the credit union. The co-treasurers said they were typically referred to other HFCU teams, which limited their interactions with the Deposit Servicing team directly.

With the online system off the table, the HUA has reverted to the manual transfer process — which Zhao and Fields said has left them with limited visibility into the status of individual payments.

“We don’t have too much visibility into which clubs have gotten their money at what time,” Zhao said. “After we tell the bank that these disbursements are happening, it’s basically out of our control.”

Zhao said the co-treasurers have tried to expedite individual cases by calling the bank and spending “dozens of hours” in its lobby. Beyond that, he said, “there’s just a very limited set of tools at our disposal.”

The HFCU clarified that the Deposit Servicing team processes disbursements from a back-office environment, and that the branch staff Zhao described spending hours with are not directly involved in those requests.

Montilli wrote that the HFCU is testing a new Online Business Banking platform better suited to organization-type accounts, which he said should improve the process for student groups going forward.

Separate from the disbursement delays, internal slowdowns within the HUA’s own grant review process have also disrupted programming for at least one student organization this semester.

The Harvard Islamic Society submitted its spring grant application on Feb. 9 and was notified on Feb. 23 of an application error, with a promise that details would follow within two to three days. After sending four messages without an initial response, the group received an update more than a week later, on March 2, and submitted a corrected application three days after that.

Five more messages to the HUA went without substantive reply until the society contacted HUA President Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 directly, at which point it received a funding decision on March 26 — more than six weeks after first applying.

“A series of mistakes and oversights contributed to the situation with HIS,” the HUA Finance Team wrote in a statement. “Unfortunately, there are only two people responsible for managing the affairs of 250 clubs in addition to all HUA initiatives, banking issues, school commitments, and personal responsibilities so mistakes are inevitable.”

Harvard Islamic Society President Shakira Ali ’28 said most of the organization’s HUA funding supports its annual pre-Ramadan programming, including iftars, as well as an April 4 Eid celebration in Quincy courtyard that typically draws 300 to 400 attendees. Though the society received its funds a few days ago, Ali said the delayed decision constrained its planning throughout the semester.

“We were kind of banking on HUA funding to help cover that as well,” Ali said, adding that the absence of a funding decision “limited what we could and could not do.”

“This is like a spring grant that we want to use in the spring semester, but the spring semester is almost over,” Ali said. “We have like a month of school left, really.”

—Staff writer Alma T. Barak can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at almabk.54. Follow her on X @almabk_.

—Staff writer Theresa F. Bartelme can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at theresabartelme.15. Follow her on X @theresabartelme.