Apple Bottom Jeans, Budgets with the Fur.
I would like to start by expressing just how happy I am with our Society right now. All of our reps, directors, and exec seem more dedicated than ever to proactively trying to improve and develop our services and events to reach more and more of the engineering student body as well as the campus as a whole. It is no small task to build and support what we currently have, all while managing school and life, and so I offer my most sincere high-five to everyone who is giving it their all.
Unfortunately, our dreams often grow a bit faster than our income and this term is a prime example. The past few terms have been pretty easy going with respect to spending, however the cutbacks that had to happen this term may well be a sign of things to come. In all, our directors over-budgeted by around $10,000 which I had to cut back out. I feel really bad about that, but it had to be done. I tried my best to ensure that everything would still be able to run without any issue.
The main thing I would like to bring up is food. Initially, 44% of the money directors asked for was going towards food. Sometimes food is necessary, like when student volunteers are being asked to work over meal times and for several hours. However, sometimes food isn’t as necessary – like when we have a fun event in the afternoon or evening at a venue that already serves food. At this point, people shouldn’t need further enticing. I think it’s important that directors remember to do their best to keep their budgets lean without sacrificing quality.
On my final VPF-y note, I’m going to work to better define some “rules of thumb” for directors and future exec to use when budgeting. I feel like that will help keep us all on the same page so that we don’t have any big surprises come budget time.
So, I present you with your Winter 2011 budget. Use it to figure out how much you have to spend, or show it to your friends and amaze them with your knowledge of numbers, tables, and rudimentary addition!
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