After 32 years of parenting by the UA system, the UA Foundation is taking steps to move out of mom's basement.

The restructuring necessary to realize that goal has forced the foundation to make significant changes to its operations and focus, including cutting an annual grant fund controlled by UA President Mark Hamilton.

"The foundation is moving towards being less financially dependent on the university," said Mary Rutherford, acting president of the UA Foundation, the university's private money-raising arm. "After looking at other foundations, we adopted a whole lot of changes."

One of those changes is that students and faculty looking for one-time grant money can no longer turn to the President's Special Projects Fund (PSPF) for financial assistance. The PSPF was $75,000 set aside to be given as small grants to various projects, almost always in quantities of $5,000 or less.

"The president awarded the money," said UA Foundation spokeswoman Jackie Cordova. "We did the accounting, made sure you filled out the right paperwork, and transferred the money to the right department."

The most common recipients of the money were projects that needed initial, interim or emergency funding, or were outside of the realm of traditional university research, Cordova said.

It was never meant to be a permanent source of funding for one project, Cordova continued, but rather a way of filling for funding gaps in projects.

According to Rutherford, the foundation's board and administration approved the budget without the PSPF in spring 2006.

"We felt we were able to accomplish the institutions priorities without that fund," Rutherford said.

Part of the foundation's efforts to function independently of the UA system includes helping each campus increase its own fundraising capabilities. Rutherford said the foundation hopes that by doing so the money they award will be more effective.

Instead of putting the money delegated to the PSPF towards research, Rutherford said that it was used to fund more than $1 million in grants that were distributed to the development offices at each campus.

According to Rutherford, more than $300,000 was also dolled out for UA marketing. Though Rutherford said that $75,000 wasn't a huge portion of the foundation's annual budget of over $3.3 million, it made a difference to the recipients of PSPF grants.

"I was disappointed that PSPF grants are no longer awarded because it's a nontraditional source of funding on campus, and it's nice to have that resource," said Rick Ruhkick, an engineering technician at UAF's Geophysical Institute.

Ruhkick was part of a team that used a 2005 PSPF grant to buy vehicle sensors for its arctic tortoise entry into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grand Challenge, a competition to build vehicles in less than six hours.

Other than the PSPF grant, the remainder of the project's funding came from donations by team members and community members, Ruhkick said. According to Ruhkick, the challenge asked research teams to design and construct an autonomous vehicle to travel a 130-mile DARPA course in the desert.

"Our project is no longer going because Stanford won the competition, but I imagine it'll affect a number of people looking for non-traditional funding," said Ruhkick.

The importance of the funding to researchers may never have been communicated to those outside research circles, making it difficult for outsiders to understand the negative impacts.

Rutherford said that the other most significant change in the budget is that the foundation will now cover the administrative costs associated with managing and distributing the non-profit organization's money. The Board of Regents this summer approved a one-time fee of up to 5 percent on gifts to the foundation to cover administrative costs.

"We looked at the funding we have instead of depending on the university," said Rutherford. "Charging a five percent fee is not atypical for our type of organization, it's just new to the university system."