Mar
03
2010
The GUSA FinApp committee drafts budget for funding boards
Posted by: Molly Redden in News, Vox Populi, tags: Club Funding, FinApp Committee, Funding Board, GUSAThe Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee has drafted a budget for the fiscal year 2010 allocation of the Student Activities Fee. Here is the breakdown of the draft budget, along with comments made by the FinApp Committee explaining the draft allocation amounts:
- The Georgetown Programming Board requested $45,000 and the FinApp Committee has suggested they receive $42,500
“This represents a substantial 11.84% increase in allocated student activity fee money from last year’s allocation ($38,000). The main reasons for the increased allocation are increasing busing costs, an increase in the number of cultural events, the desire to increase the caliber of the annual Spring Kickoff Concert, and to deliver more overall programming benefiting the student body.”
- SAC requested $37,000 and the draft allocation is for $12,500, less than half of their request.
“In our draft budget, our committee decided to allocate the Student Activities Commission $12,500 out of its $37,500 requested this year, in recognition that the Commission is in good standing with some, but not all, of the reform proposals. The committee has set aside an additional $12,500 to be allocated if SAC comes to a compromise on the fourth and fifth points of reform.
“The potential total of $25,000 is significantly less than the funding request because the Commission, as determined by the Vice President’s office, possesses over $60,000 in excess reserve funds. We would expect the Commission to begin spending down this reserve to cover the balance of this allocation, and not cut back on club funding. Furthermore, it is noted that several members of the Committee have advocated a $0 allocation for the Commission for as long as it fails to comply with the outstanding two reform points.”
- CSJ-ABSO requested $64,000, and the draft allocation is $61,500
“CSJ-ABSO expects to face increased funding requests due to an increase in the number of groups under CSJ and inflationary costs related to transportation and space, among other increases. As a result, CSJ requested $64,000. Though we believe that this 42% increase from last year is justified … [we] had to balance this request alongside others. A proposed $61,500 allocation would enable CSJ to fully fund all expected group requests.”
- The Performing Arts Advisory Council requested $25,000 and the draft allocation is $25,000
“PAAC … did not request an increase over last year’s allocation. The Committee believes their current reserve size is far too high …. However, we do not have official numbers on the recommended size of PAAC’s reserve from the Vice President’s office. The Committee feels comfortable with allocating PAAC its full request because its reserve will be used to pay for forthcoming large-scale capital projects.”
- The GUSA Executive asked for $35,000 and the draft allocation to them is for $28,000
“The Georgetown University Student Association budget was trimmed by $7,000 for two primary reasons: 1. GUSA’s current balance in FY09 is over $10,000, a majority of which will likely roll back into the Student Activities Fee Reserve. 2. The Committee believes that a $7,500 line item for ‘future initiatives’ was not specific enough.”
- Media Board requested $36,000 and the draft allocation is for $36,000.
“In allocating the Media Board its full request, we were particularly cognizant of two features of their proposal: First, their overall budget proposal requests a $10,000 decrease in Student Activity Fee funding (dropping from $46,373 to $36,000). Second, the Media Board finds itself in a particularly precarious situation. According to their proposal, there’s a significant chance that The Hoya will go independent in the coming year. If this change takes place as tentatively planned, the entire Media Board runs the financial risk of large reserve losses. There’s little evidence that any other Media Board group can raise a significant profit.”
- Clubs Sports requested $150,000 and the draft allocation is for $115,000.
“The Advisory Board to Club Sports is particularly dependent on funding from the Student Activity Fee with about 90% of the board’s annual budget being comprised of Student Activity Fee money. With the understanding that despite marked year over year increases in allocations to ABCS only 30% of club funding requests are met, we, the finance and appropriations committee, tried in earnest to continue meeting club sports’ needs.”
- SAC Office, which provides supplies for all its groups, requested $21,500 and the draft allocation is for $20,000.
- Welcome Week requested $10,000 and the draft allocation is for $7,000.
- And Homecoming requested $12,000 and the draft allocation is for $12,000.
“In the absence of a new request, the Committee based the “SAC Office” line-item (which provides supplies and other resources to all student groups) off of last year’s figure, trimming $1,500 to account for one-time capital expenses. The same was the case for Homecoming, which remained the same. The Committee increased funding to Welcome Week by $2,000 based on its request for more funding of $5,000, which was justified solely on grounds that it wanted to more equitably share the burden of costs among different funders.”
In total, the FinApp Committee recommended that the GUSA Senate allocate $360,000 of the $436,000 requested. Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) pointed out that the Advisory Boards had asked for about $50,000 more than was available for GUSA to allocate, and GUSA drew from the GUSA Fund to cover Advisory Board requests.
Entries (RSS)
Great. Let SAC spend down their useless reserves! It’s high time GUSA started standing up to that worthless institution.
SAC, I award you zero dollars, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Can someone clarify what is happening to the other 260k or so? Is it going to the student activities endowment?
Also I thought it was required by the referendum creating the student fee that 50% of it go to the endowment. Can the GUSA senate just ignore the rule?
This all seems fairly reasonable. The SAC funding is a little surprising, but not without purpose. GUSA seems to be making reasonable trade offs between the demand for funds and the funds they have.
@Question – $315,000 will go into the Student Activities Fee endowment, half of the estimated total amount of fees that will be collected next year, consistent with the student referendum.
The baseline allocation for FY10 is also $315,000 (the other half of the fee), but we increased this to ~$382,000 by spending down the Funding Board reserve and surplus accounts, as well as rolling back half of the GUSA Fund (which was intended to be spent last semester, but it did not get up and running in time). The draft allocated $360,000 to the various boards and big events – and sets aside the balance (~$22,000) to be used between SAC (potentially) and additional allocations throughout next year.
Hope that helps.
Very helpful, thank you very much Nick. Do you care to offer an opinion on whether GUSA could alter the terms of contribution to the endowment, and if so how? (Another referendum, or just an act of the senate.)
I must say I’m impressed with how GUSA has handled this whole situation. It seems to be making progress but not overbearingly so. This also suggests that all the huffpuffing about getting rid of the boards’ votes was overblown, though of course in a few years when the current crop of senators is gone I guess we’ll see if GUSA can maintain the relative consistency it has had these last few years.
Kudos, I suppose.
Kudos to Nick and the FinApp for going out of their way to squeeze out money for the different boards under tight budget constraints. I hope they can address the endowment question shortly so as to free up a lot of additional funding (especially with the Hoya going independent, giving a huge hit to the Media Board’s finances next year).
I still think the FinApp has been too generous to SAC, though this is only the draft allocation.
While the FinApp may generously say SAC has complied with all but two of the six reforms, I think they’ve stretched their definitions to fit.
An independent appeals process technically exists — but it’s just appealing to Dr. Olson; this is hardly a workable solution, and with due respect to Dr. Olson, I can hardly see him exercising his role that often — likely resulting in extreme deference to SAC. And in situations where SAC votes are most controversial and thus in need of some sort of check, I can see Dr. Olson simply going with the path of least resistance.
The reserve policy has not been addressed. SAC has stated they plan to “spend down” some of the reserves, but even GUSA and SAC disagreed how it was to be spent or on what timeline. And it hasn’t been spent down, yet. A promise is just that — and SAC hasn’t been great at keeping its promises. I’d wait to get a binding commitment and workable plan before proclaiming that one in compliance.
And then, of course, are the two reform issues that are most important that SAC hasn’t complied with — open voting and an elected board. These are the strongest checks on arbitrary and capricious actions and SAC has all but said they are refusing to consider them at all. These two reforms make up about 90% of the whole package’s importance.
With $60K+ in reserves and refusing to comply with the most important funds, GUSA should have given SAC $0.
Luckily this is only a draft proposal, as mentioned above. Depending on how SAC acts, some FinApp members may wish to revisit their votes — and of course, budgets can be amended by the Senate, or voted down, if they don’t like it.
@Question – My understanding of the situation is that any change to the proportion of the Student Activity Fee that is distributed between the annual allocation and the endowment would necessitate a referendum – as would be the case if we wanted to begin allocating any of the interest earned from the endowment. That’s something we’d like to begin dialogue about soon after this current process is complete. It is my opinion that the current funding system is unsustainable with the kind of growth in student activities we are seeing, as well as a general desire to better fund existing groups.
I think the best method of urging compliance is this:
Under the current budget, SAC is allocated $12.5K now, $12.5K if they comply with the results by the time the budget has passed. Presumably, the FinApp is trying to give an olive branch of goodwill to SAC in advance of negotiations.
SAC, however, has $60K+ in reserves they can use. There seems to be no stipulation that if SAC refuses to comply by some time period, they won’t get the $12.5K allocated taken away. SAC requested $37.5K and received $12.5K, leaving a gap of $25K. If they want to be obstinate and refuse to reform, they need only dip into their reserves $25K to make up for lost revenue — or pass on the lack of funds to clubs.
Making them dipping $37.5K into the reserves to be on the same level (cutting them down some 60% in one year) is a much more persuasive motivator. They will see the writing on the wall and realize it’s only a matter of time that they can function at the same level with $0 contribution from the Student Activities.
A better approach would be to combine carrot and stick.
Allocate $0 to SAC in the budget and $25K to a SAC escrow account. If, by the end of this school year, SAC signs a binding agreement with GUSA outlining the changes it will make by the beginning of the next school year to comply with the remaining reforms, release the full amount to GUSA.
If, by the end of the school year, SAC does not comply, take $12.5K out of the escrow account and earmark it for the GUSA Fund. This is to prevent to the best possible degree clubs from suffering from reduced fees. The earmarks could even be through some expedited process for clubs to apply. In any case that bridge can be crossed when we get there.
The remaining $12.5K will remain in the escrow account over the next school year. If at any point during the year, SAC reaches an agreement and complies with the reforms, they get the money. This will hopefully act as a continuing carrot for both GUSA and SAC clubs to pressure SAC into reforming, especially if they get tight on cash.
Overall, it’s a great tiered carrot-and-stick system that motivates SAC to comply sooner rather than later.
If they comply by the end of the school year, they get $25K. If they don’t, $12.5K gets taken away and allocated to the GUSA Fund earmarked specifically for SAC groups. If they comply at any point next year, they get $12.5K. If they don’t comply at all, they get $0 — and when next come it comes time to argue for funds in next year’s allocation, they’re probably going to have to face some hard realities.
That should read, “If, by the end of this school year, SAC signs a binding agreement with GUSA outlining the changes it will make by the beginning of the next school year to comply with the remaining reforms, release the full amount to SAC” not GUSA.
Weird as this is going to sound, I think the plan outlined above and the FinApp’s decisions about this budget are more or less brilliant. Scratch more or less, I am proud of the results of the budget summit without qualification. and of course to have had my own senator involved — good job Matt Hoyt.
I would, though, disagree with Stoller’s idea of giving SAC $0 outright. I commend whoever it is within FinApp that agreed that giving SAC 1/3 of its request was a good idea this time around, though I do think that the general carrot-and-stick approach is a great idea. And as much as I oppose the idea of the GUSA fund for its lack of sustainability and necessitated expertise in the long term, transferring that money to the GUSA fund in this case appears to be a brilliant way to spare the clubs from the kind of risk I talked about in my campaign. I do wonder if GUSA couldn’t just do the same thing with co-sponsorships instead of with this GUSA fund, but in the end, this is a great way to advocate in the interests of students. These requests are rational and reasonable and not radical or extreme, especially FinApp’s decision to give SAC half of the potential total now, and half if they make some much-needed fixes. The same goes for Stoller’s suggestion to offer them more if they continue to reform, and less if they don’t (but without causing harm to the clubs).
I will flatly and openly say that I am impressed with how the FinApp people are handling this whole thing. Flat-out impressed and you can quote me on it. I hope, though, that future Senators on that committee can be equally trusted to be so diligent and thoughtful, which does concern me.
I will also say that Matt Stoller, who was a good buddy of mine while he was still a student here two years ago, needs to learn to stay out of GUSA issues and campus politics. I wouldn’t have wanted to rob him of the opportunity to make up his own mind on these things when he was a student here, and I don’t think he should provide any more than knowledge (read: opinions) to those who are current students being directly affected by these debates.
-Matt Wagner
GUSA Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee Chair, 2008-2009
So what happens if SAC gives a big, diplomatic “f u” to GUSA, says they’re not going to approve the remainder of the GUSA’s demands, says that they’re not going to spend down their reserves any further, and lets the remaining 12.5k on the table float away? What process exists so that student groups aren’t caught in the middle of the GUSA-SAC pissing match (which is easily one of my favorite terms ever)?
GUSA Fund I suppose. Plus GUSA could set up some sort of additional method. I doubt it would ever come to that, though.
GUSA is extending an olive branch of good will to SAC – the ball is in their court for the next move, whether they chose to step forward or backwards…
What reforms have they complied with?
They don’t allow lump sum funding — except in pitifully-small amounts ($190/club, of which they further cut down).
They don’t have open voting
They don’t have elected board members
They don’t have a truly workable independent appeals process
They haven’t spent down their reserves or agred to a concrete plan on how to do so
So that leaves… what? They post their meeting minutes online (sans votes) and let clubs use funds they’ve fundraised (and even then, if you want to use those funds to supplement an event you’re asking funding for, they still make you account for them). And for this we’re giving them $12,500?
[...] and Appropriation Committee was all anti-climax, with the Senators having to put off voting on the draft budget they put together before Spring Break until [...]