Student groups trim budgets

Mo’ money, mo’ problems doesn’t seem to be a mantra many are living by these days, particularly when it comes to Columbia club funding.

In fact, it’s less money, mo’ problems—with governing board allocations taking a cut, councils, board chairs, and clubs are looking to trim spending and prioritize costs.

“For the last several years, club spending has grown much faster than our budgets have grown,” Gunnar Aasen, Engineering Student Council Intergroup vice president and SEAS ’10, said. “Not to say that our budgets haven’t grown, they haven’t shrunk at all. The additional amount of money that we’re getting is not proportionate with how much more was requested.”

In a process known as Funding at Columbia University, or F@CU, a committee made up of the incoming and outgoing presidents and vice presidents of finance from each of the undergraduate student councils receive proposals and funding requests from the student governing boards. While the amounts requested and received have fluctuated over the past ten years, the trend has been decidedly upward. The committee realized that this trend would not be sustainable in the long run.

Governing with less

Though F@CU committee members say they always regret not being able to give the full amounts requested, the money simply was not there. This year, the committee took the amount they thought appropriate for each board and cut that number by 15 percent.

Areas of student life seem to have expanded, whether it is primarily in the number of students involved in groups or the more ambitious programming and spending per club proposed. While a significant amount of financial strain has been, up until now, offset by surpluses found in various governing boards at the end of the year, the boards did not end the year with extra funds.

Nuriel Moghavem, CC ’11 and Columbia College Student Council VP of finance, said that there had not been a substantial increase in the number of clubs recognized by student governing boards. In one case, he said, a board had de-recognized more groups than recognized that year. Sharmin Ahmed, BC ’10 and VP of finance at Barnard’s Student Government Association, said she could not see the growth in club involvement, and tried to base what was a fair allocation from there.

“We just have to acknowledge that there isn’t really a growth in student activities,” Ahmed said. “When you think about it, there aren’t more students, and maybe the students are more active, but students don’t have more time on their hands, so they can’t be doing more clubs and being more active.”

Student leaders chalk up increased spending to a number of factors. Food costs also eat up funds, especially as prices increase. Facilities charges also hit clubs hard, and council and governing board members say they are trying to work with the University to make facilities costs under control. Groups are billed for space use and other services by Columbia Facilities, but the charges sometimes come long after the event has taken place. Also, clubs say it is difficult to track costs incurred, and may be surprised at the end of the year to find that they owe the University money when they thought everything was already paid.

“Groups end up in debt because of that,” Moghavem said.

One goal is to get those costs to come up more quickly in the student accounts, and to make the prices more transparent. Student Governing Board chair Devora Aharon, CC’10 and board treasurer at the time, said she and the prior SGB chair met with Columbia Facilities last year about facilities quotes. While cost charting had been confusing for students in the past, Aharon said that they found there was a definitive facilities price list. The SGB is working to put the list in a useful form and publish it on their Web site.

Expenses climb

Culture shows and concerts have grown more expensive over the years. The spring Bacchanal concert, which has brought large names to campus including Vampire Weekend and Jay-Z, has run extremely costly. The event is a relatively recent addition to Columbia student programming, and one possibility is that groups expanded programming and spending when there was some slack in the budget when not paying for Bacchanal.

Some have wondered if funding the expensive concert has put pressure on clubs that were now requesting more funding.

In 2004, in honor of Columbia’s 250th anniversary, R&B star Jay-Z came to campus for a free concert for students, set up by two groups that would later merge to form Bacchanal. The news of the event was leaked online to outside sources, and the concert drew in hordes of people who were not Columbia affiliates. The crowds were unexpected, and without the opportunity for Columbia security to close off or secure the campus as they have done in other high profile events—such as in the fall 2007 visit from controversial Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad—the New York Police Department was called in for crowd control, and the bill cost a fortune.

The ABC, ESC, GSSC, and SGA were apparently drained of funds. CCSC was criticized some for not paying into the concert, though the council then agreed to pick up the tab for the next issue to come up that would need unexpected or emergency funds. The concert tradition went on hiatus, though it has been resurrected in recent years, and the names have become increasingly bigger. According to Moghavem, the concert last spring cost more than years before, and was paid with a large co-sponsorship from undergraduate councils and a large funding appeal from ABC.

“It’s just generally been that clubs think that once they’ve held events one year and been successful that they’re going to get more money next year, which they should,” Aasan said, in order to facilitate group growth. “Each governing board has their own place where increased costs are coming from.”

Clubs are also encouraged to look to other places for money, such as the Earl Hall fund, which gives money to cross-cultural events.

Cutting back, spending smartly

Aharon said that SGB was forced to cut funding to a number of their groups, and that they were unable to give increased funding to new groups who had needed more money. But like the other governing boards and the clubs under them, the SGB is trying to make it work. SGB is working on community building among its groups, according to Aharon, as well as making cost information more readily available for clubs. The SGB Web site is updating its resources to include guides for groups looking to hold activities or events, such as space reservation and Facilities or AV costs.

Aharon also said that the SGB planned to hold office hours so as to address any possible questions from groups.

“While SGB funding has increased over the past few years, it has consistently remained low relative to our growth and the need of our group. And the cut this year really takes its toll on us,” Aharon said.

Scott St. Marie, CC’10 and chair of Activities Board at Columbia, said that the board was looking to make internal operations more efficient, as well as encourage clubs to pursue outside fundraising, some of which has seen significant success. Emphasis would also be put on smart spending.

“We’re always trying to help groups get more bang for their buck,” he said.

“What the governing boards have done well is to encourage clubs to start revenue raising,” Moghavem said, listing conferences, social events, and dances as successful methods in the past of bringing in funds.

Independent club fundraising also means groups can spend the money as they please, instead of conforming to the restrictions in the money allocated. For example, clubs cannot pay for Web space with F@CU allocations, but can with their own revenue money.

For governing board leaders, the trick will be to end the year on budget, which is more easily said than done. Last year, ABC saw their allocations cut by $60,000—the year before they had ended with a surplus of the same amount—and eventually went into debt.

“They [F@CU committee] cut too far,” Moghavem noted, and the ABC was granted a bailout package from F@CU that spring.

Looking ahead

The boards will also have to plan ahead and prioritize under the assumption that they will most likely be unable to request increased funds from next year’s F@CU committee.

The F@CU process has become significantly more transparent in recent years. While funding allocations used to be determined by the 16 members of the F@CU committee behind closed doors, the decision-making has opened to the public. The reasoning behind allocation decisions has, as a result, become more apparent, and while some allotment may have seemed previously confusing or arbitrary, the open sessions, as well as letters of explanations released following allocations, have given boards a better understanding of the amounts they receive. Some have said they think the presence of governing board members has helped boost the funds they have been allotted.

“The message that came through from the councils during F@CU this year was that there wasn’t capacity for increases in the future,” St. Marie said. “Therefore I would suspect that the governing boards won’t be requesting the ten percent increase” in the ’10-’11 F@CU that they had in the past.

Ideally, the F@CU committee would like to see a small portion of the allocated money, perhaps five percent, roll over each year, Moghavem said.

While the amount of money requested and allocated by governing boards has fluctuated from year to year, the goal is to reach a sustainable plateau and consistency, though it may take a few years to even out.

Each student is charged with a student life fee, which is built into the tuition. Only a portion of that goes into F@CU. Where the rest of that money goes is unclear to some student leaders.

Some seem reluctant to push for any kind of tuition increase, though Aasan said increasing the student life fee was being looked into. Ahmed said that while the idea may have been mentioned, she does not think any serious conversation with the administration about the possibility has taken place.

“Personally, I’m opposed to any tuition increase because it’s [tuition] already out of control,” Moghavem said. “It’s something that’s been brought up.”