PDF grants are not awarded by the union but by a Professional Development Funding (PDF) committee. Each year, the union local provides a list of about seven lecturer volunteers to campus administrators who then choose five lecturers from that list to serve on the committee. Committee members are increasingly recruited from the ranks of previous grant winners, but any Unit 18 lecturer may volunteer to serve on the committee.

The PDF committee revises procedures, criteria, and documents for each year's PDF awards in consultation with the administration. The committee works with the union to publicize the grants, but the committee alone evaluates the applications and submits recommendations for awards to the appropriate administrator. The PDF committee is thus a University committee, not a union committee, though it works with union representatives as well as university administrators to implement the MOU requirements for the PDF program.