Last year, the Union closed the books with about a $200,000 surplus. This much-needed surplus has been added to Union reserves, allowing some of us in the Union to take a relaxing deep breath, so to speak.
As a Union, we are financially independent from the rest of the Institute. This means a variety of things: when the Institute has to make budget cutbacks across the board, the Union is exempt. By the same token when the Union runs into financial hardship, we do not have the reserve level to neglect small fluctuations in student population in Union spending. It certainly makes my job a bit easier this year, and gives the Union a little more needed stability. This year we are now better able to handle the increase in student participation by revising old budgets to fit the current student demand, and to be more flexible with contingency and start-up club requests. However, this leads to the question: Was this truly a good year?
The fact that we came in with a surplus also means that we were off by $200,000 in our budgeting process. This money could have been used, for example, to get new clubs started to directly benefit last year’s activity fee paying student. Considering that the Union operates with a budget of about $8.5 million, under budgeting by about 2.5 percent is exceptional by most standards. To me, this means that there is an opportunity to improve. I believe that we can do a better job of identifying and locating this inactive money during the current fiscal year so that it can be reallocated to current student needs.
One thing that I have begun to stress for the year as a theme for the Executive Board is the success of the individual club, event, or service. This comes down to decision-making at the E-Board level for the funding of all these programs. As an E-Board, it is clear that the better information we have, the better decisions we can make. This will be one of the major issues and initiatives that will be addressed by the Advancement Committee, which is a new Executive Board sub-committee composed of E-Board members, Union system administrators, and several key Union staff personal. We will be looking at new tools to aid the budgeting process, so that as a Board, we are more objective and accurate. These may include, but by no means are limited to: possible in-year reviews on Union clubs and programs, simplified budgeting templates, and linking the variable of time into Union funds.
Another initiative that will be discussed is the tracking of student participation in Union clubs and programs, along with the history of their subsidy and the general activity fee. Board members could use this information as an indicator or qualitative measure in the budgeting process. With the implementation of the online budgeting system last year, technology has allowed us to compile data in a matter of seconds that in the past had taken weeks of compiling old budgets and tedious bookwork. We can now explore the possibility of presenting the data in a fashion that will significantly aid E-Board member’s decision-making. This is an exciting time in the history of Rensselaer, and as a Union we are making strides to continue to advance the Union as the Institute charges into the 21st century. As we begin this work, we have one ultimate goal: ensure that every single activity fee dollar has been optimized for the betterment of the entire Union.
