TWUSA wants to spend your money September 13, 2006
Posted by mwj as business, money, twu. trackback.Every year we hear about the big pile of sludge money that gets shifted over to the subsequent year’s council, unspent and unused. For the past couple of years it has been around $30,000. The reasons for such a large carry-over each year have more to do with underspent budgets and unclaimed CUBE money than broad financial mismanagement, but the fact remains that it’s a whole bunch of money that we’re left with each year.
Quite frankly, we don’t know what to do with this money, and I would like to hear from students to get some ideas. So far I’ve heard the following:
- Buy a sound system and a stage.
- Invest it in multi-year GICs or something “safe” and let it grow.
- Do some landscaping around Douglas to make campus look nicer (between the LC and Robson maybe?)
- Buy a couple flat screen TVs, put them up in Douglas Centre and transform the place into a major hub of information for the university
- Donate a big chunk to the library to help them with purchasing databases and books
- Start a scholarship fund
- Make every TWUSA event or service free to students so that we don’t keep hitting them up for money all the time
Do you have any other ideas?
UPDATE: I just had a new idea. What if we dissolve the association and just send $300,000 a year into an endowment fund. After 5 years we’ll have about $1.6 million, and about one hundred grand a year from the interest to give to students who need it.
Comments»
Half to a scholarship fund and half to some sort of safe investment - that would be useful to the student association in some massive project, like buying their own place or building their own building somewhere in the future. Alternatively, it could be used to host a conference of CCCU student unions to discuss issues of mutual concern and to forge a vision for the future of Christian student unions. A working paper on issues and a manifesto for the future could be the product of such an event.
Being at Alberta, I can safely say that one of the more brilliant ideas is the S.A.’s Student Access fund, which gives bursaries to students experiencing shortfalls. It is such a good idea. I would like to see the Student Association invest money every year so that eventually interest from a pile of money can be given back to the students.
Start a scholarship fund. And I fully support the disbanding of TWUSA in order to start a massive fund which generates interest that could then be given to students.
I like Christo’s idea of hosting a conference to build a unity of Christian student associations. Also, I would still like to see a big Chess board placed on campus (in a newly renovated mail room plan, atrium, or outside, beside the atrium and infront of the bell tower). It would be ubernerd and uberacademic and uberexcessive.