Finance 2008-2009

Hey Everyone,

My task for this week were to remind everyone of timesheet due dates:

I had an oversight on my part since I found out Saturday that timesheets were due on Friday at noon, instead of Monday 23, at 2pm. So I will have to see what I can do about this on Monday.

Update-

The scholarship initiative is still a work in progress, I met with Dr. Klink last Thursday the 19th to discuss other options regarding how to approach the solicitation effort in this difficult economy. The meeting was very productive as Dr. Klink has a lot of experience and gave me the necessary insight needed to further pursue this effort. Therefore, I will be meeting with Robert McDonald, the director of business services to see how SGA can partner with them in some form to have a VCU SGA scholarship.

Thanks,

Hey everyone,

My tasks for last week were as follows:

To create a new line item in our budget for SGA t-shirts.

To move money into a publicity line item for giveaways this summer.

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I have submitted the request to create a new line item for t-shirts it will be heard this Friday Feb. 20 by the appropriations committee.

The money in out budget last semester is still available to use to use, I will have to talk to Jibran for his okay to move the money.

As for Peer mentoring Stephanie Lynch & I will be giving a presentation to the mentors this Wednesday at Noon about SGA!

Thanks,

Hey Everyone,

My tasks for last week were as follows:

To give Morgan, the Chief of Staff a list of all the directors hours claimed this semester.

To prepare a presentation for Cabinet to explain the major changes in regards to the Appropriations Committee.
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I have printed a hard copy of Cabinets total hours claimed and given it to Morgan.

I prepared my presentation and was ready to present it at Jan. 9th at 9pm.

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Updates:

Peer Mentoring Program- The progress has been excellent thus far, this coming Wednesday I, along with Stephanie Lynch of Academic Affairs will be presentation information about SGA.

Good News! I will be meeting with Dr. Klink to have the endorsement of the Student Affairs to do a book scholarship.

Appropriations- Has been awesome the meeting are running smoothly and the new changes have been the cause. This Friday Jan. 13th we will be hearing Political and Service groups.

Thanks,

Hey everyone,

My task for last week were:

1. Get final count of peer advisors
2. Meet with Jibran about scholarship effort
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1.) First off a little background on the Student Advising Students Program (SAS), this program is a partnership between the Monroe Park Campus Student Government Association and the University College. In which, I came up with about 3 years ago, while serving as a Senator. The original focus of this program was for juniors and seniors to advise sophomore students within their major. Whereas, the new focus is on freshman students to receive mentoring from sophomore students and above. Currently there are 30 student peer mentors participating in this program this semester.

The 30 peer mentors consist of the following majors:

7 Psychology
3 Chemestry
6 Biology
4 Criminal Justice
2 LSEE
1 Political Science
2 Economics
1 Finance
1 Mass Communications
1 English
1 Philosophy

2.)I met with Jibran about the scholarship committee and explained to him that the committee would need to do research about how other SGA’s have started their scholarship initiatives before we go any further. Also scheduling a meeting with the committee was not possible, because everyone was free at different times and days. So, I plan to meet with everyone in the committee after cabinet tomorrow.

On Thursday January 22, I helped train and inform student organization leaders on the changes to the annual funding process. I’m glad to report that the students organizations overall perception of the new budget form was very positive! So special thanks to Rod Dadzie, Dr. Reed, Justine Abais, the appropriations committee for all their hard work.

Thanks,

Eddie Brunson

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to update everyone on the status of the VCU Scholarship effort.

I met with Tom Burke and Ike Tucker of the VCU Foundation to seek their advice on our effort to start a scholarship fund. This meeting proved to be so informative, because they explained the nature of how things work in terms of setting up a scholarship fund and it's options.

To cut to the chase, they stated it takes on average 10 years for a endowed scholarship fund to be established, because of the difficultly in raising at least $10,000 to set up an investment account, where you can't touch the funds for 1 year. Therefore, it is on the 2nd year that you can begin to pay out scholarships.

So, looks like this is actually a long term effort. Nonetheless, I still feel that we should as leaders lay down the foundation to start an endowed VCU SGA scholarship.

Two options we have is:

• To go ahead and solicit businesses and partner with Student Affairs to set up an current account with them, any funds we get we will give away as scholarships this March or so.
• Or we can still partner with the Office of Student Affairs, and lay down the ground work to start an endowment fund, and solicit businesses by Dec. 1st till May 2009. Then make sure we meet with whoever the new committee members will be for the fall 2009, so that the new committee will know how to continue this effort until we reach the funds needed to set up the account.

We will not let this news be discourging to us...so look forward to more updates regarding this effort.

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Next, as of Peer Advising I have e-mailed all those that have applied about 35 in total---pretty much thanking them for apply and that we are going to be scheduling interviews with them during the week of Dec. 1st. I also will be e-mailing those that are graduating in May of 2009, depsite being an excellent candidate we cannot take them on, since peer mentors won't begain peer mentoring until the Fall of 2009.

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Hey everyone,

My tasks for this week were as follows:

1.) Update the Executive Budget
2.) Attend the Appropriations Committee Bylaws changes meetings
3.) Attend the Peer Mentoring meeting Nov. 14 th
4.) Update on the Alternative Funding Committee
5.) Find if it's not too late to do financial paper work to pay for reserving Neeru's community room
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1.) I have update the Exec's budget with the exception of our salaries line, which I will have to update on Monday.
2.) I attended the Appropriations Committee meeting and again I would like to commend the committee for all the hard work they have put into this much needed Bylaws revisions. Today, Nov. 14th the committee worked on the bylaws revisions for about 8 hours!!
The main point of this meeting was to type the changes out and work out the structure. The details are too lengthy to explain, but I will highlight the important items.
The committee has come up with 3 funding classifications for organizations to fall under:

Monetarily Active- are organizations who always request annual funding and use their funds appropriately
Monetarily Inactive-are organizations who for whatever reason missed annuals, or even though they were registered student organizations
New Organizations- never requested funds from SGA, because they were never registered with the Student Organization office.

Now, student organizations will generally only come before the appropriations committee once based on which, classification they fall under.
In other words Monetarily Active organizations are eligible for one budget their annual budget and that's it.

The committee is proposing separating groups into categorizes such as Sports groups, Dance teams, Governing Bodies, Frat's & Sororities, etc.

From there governing bodies those groups fall under will be indentified or created so that all budgets they govern will go through them and then to the governing bodies will present the budgets Appropriations committee to final approval, before going to senate.

The committee will be meeting this Sunday to finalize the bylaws, which I will attend.

3.) We received about 25 applications today for the Peer Mentoring program and we went through them all selecting about 22 applications for the interviewing round. Early next week will be considering if we should extend the application deadline. Anyway, so far things are going very well!

4.) I am working on a meeting with Tom Burke of the VCU Foundation to seek his advice on our effort to start a scholarship fund. I have drafted a proposal and sent it out to my committee. I hope to set a meeting for this coming Wednesday so I can get feedback from everyone at once in the committee. I also plan to set up meeting with Student Accounting and Financial Aid to work out some details and to give them a heads up on what we are working on. Therefore, after really looking into this effort, I'm realizing that this effort will take more time and planning to truly be successful. I hope to have everything finalized by Dec. 1st when solicitation packets will be sent out to local businesses in Richmond.

5.) I found out that it is indeed too late to turn in financial paper to pay for reserving the community room in Neeru's place so a reimbursement will have to be done.

Thanks,

Hey everyone,

My tasks for this week were as follows:

1.) To send an updated Executive budget.

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I have sent Morgan an copy of the updated budget this Thursday afternoon.

As for other issues I'm working on here are the updates:

Peer Advising-I had a meeting with Dr. Seth Skyes of the University College along with Stephaine Lynch, and Morgan today at 3pm to finalize the application, which we will be posting by Monday on the SGA website and other places!!

The Solicitation packet- I'm still working on the packet including the history of VCU & SGA, why we need our community's support to raise these funds for student organizations to do "feed the homeless types of events". I will be sending Jibran a copy of the letter soon to finalize things.


Appropriations Bylaws Revisions- Today the appropriations committee held an excellent brainstorming session, which the committee came up with a good foundation to further discuss the revisions!

Thanks,

Hi Everyone,

My tasks for this past week were as follows:

Finance

1. Presentation for next week, including current budget
2. Work on letters for Donations for special project
3. Update us on Student Peer Advising

As for task one, I have prepared a presentation for this Sunday regarding the Appropriations process. I will also update cabinet on the budget.

As for task two, I have created a rough draft of the solicitation letter, which I hope to turn into a packet, with the letter serving as the cover page. The packet will give a brief background of the Student Government Association, what we do, major things we have accomplished for students, the proposed special project, its purpose, what we plan to accomplish with the project, why we need their support, and how to donate.

As for task three, regarding the Student Peer Advising program, called Students Advising Students (SAS). Morgan and I have met with Dr. Sykes, associate Dean of the University College regarding our joint effort to reorganize the program and focus it now on freshman rather than sophomores and above. The plan is the start recruiting students in mid October, and selected students will enroll in a course that will meet 2 hours per a week during the spring. Then the peer advisors will start officially peer advising ideally in the University College (UC) in Hibbs during the Fall of 2009!!

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Regarding Appropriations matters as of Oct. 4th below are my notes and observations:

Tiranga: Program funding request- $17,191 Funded: $5,778

This organization has a annual budget for this year and were allocated $7, 582

The total allocated to this organization is $13,360
As for their supplemental programming request heard on Oct. 3th the organization was funded money for film nights to be held in the Commons Theater as well as a banquet in the spring.
My initial concern with this group’s budget is that regarding the film nights it will all be dependent if they can reserve the Commons Theater to have this event or an accommodating space in the commons.

Saudi Student Society- Program funding request- $10,000 Funded $900
This organization is one of a few student organizations that are continuing to follow a disturbing trend, where the organization would not submit an annual budget request in or on time in January for funding for their organization in the fall and springs semester. In other words, this is an organization that believes that the Supplemental Funding process is for organizations to request funds per a semester. This is not this case, the supplemental process is for new organizations, organizations coming off of a provisional period or probation, or for unforeseen circumstances for example a speaker cancels and the cost of the replacement increases above the $500 the student organization can move on their own then they can come in to the committee and request a supplement to what they were giving in the annuals process to pull off the scheduled event.

Therefore, when groups like the Saudi Student Society comes into the Appropriations Committee requesting an budget during the supplemental funding process, puts the Appropriations Committee in the uncomfortable position of having to make exceptions, which is in no way fair to other organizations that have gone through the annual process doing everything expected of them.

Back to the Saudi Student Society, the organization did not have with them during the budget presentation any documentation for any of the line items except for the Sports activities, which was funded in full. Therefore, the committee allowed the organization to withdraw the other line items from the budget, or else if the committee considered it, the lines would have been zeroed out and the organization would not be able to come back to the Appropriation committee to request money for those same line items.
Justine has given the leaders of the organization the SGA website, and the her contact information to schedule a meeting between her and the organization to clearly explain the process to them.

NAACP at VCU: Travel Funding Request $2200 Funded $977
This organization is in the same situation as the Saudi Student Society, did not submit an annual budget and is under the false impression that the supplemental process if for groups that don’t want to or have the time to submit an annual budget. The committee decided that based on the documentation received for the travel request to go ahead and fund it at 90% of the expenses.
NAACP @ VCU: Program funding request $4,200 Funded: Tabled
Due to no documentation being provided for this event the committee allowed the organization to table this budget until the necessary documentation was provided. I plan to meet with this organization and their advisor to help them understand this process better.

NAACP @ VCU: Start up funding request $450, Funded: $450
Fully funded based on what was requested.

Honors College Idea Exchange: Start Up funding request: $1965 Funded: $1965
This organization has raised concern with the Appropriations Committee as well as me. The underlining purpose of this organization is to recruit students into the Honors College here at VCU and do to do social activities. I believe this is something to Honors College should fund a student organization formed to essentially advertise and recruit students to join to Honors college is not the purpose of the student activity fee.

This group sheds more light on the major issues the Appropriations Committee faces, because the dynamics of the various different types of organizations formed normally aren’t essentially going to benefit the greatest number of VCU students just the members of the organization, which is a big concern.
The committee along with myself hope to tackle these issues and have a weekend session where we will discuss and draft an revised Appropriations Bylaws by the end of this semester.

If you have any concerns or issues please do not hesitate to contact me at:
brunsonee@vcu.edu


Thanks,

Eddie Brunson

Hey everyone,

I have been updating the SGA executive budget, in terms of keep track of our expenses. I will be comparing it to what our fiscal person has on Monday to then update everyon in Exec.

I have been preparing a Power Point Presentation regarding how Approprations works, which I will be presenting this Sunday at Cabinet.

I have been looking over areas of the Approprations Bylaws that need to be either revised or updated to make my sugestions to the Approprations Committee by the end of this semester.

Myself and Morgan met with Dr. Sykes, an Associate Dean at the University College to discuss plans to restart the Students Advising Students (SAS) peer advising plan for the Spring semester. AS, of now we trying to figure out the details and possibly change the focus to Freshmen students, from sphomores specfically.

I will be scheduling a meeting with Jibran and Morgan to discuss the propsal we will be working on regarding a type of community service day geared towards soroties and fraternities here on campus.

Thanks,

Eddie Brunson

Eddie Brunson
mailto:brunsonee@vcu.edu

Hey,

First, off I wasn't able to attend the appropriations committee on Sept. 19th so I won't have information about what went on until Monday.

I was able to attend a spending workshop so I now can sign off on financial issues regarding SGA Executive.

I will have to postpone my meeting with Solle about presidential roundtables purchases until early next week, since the first roundtable meeting will be the following Monday.

I'm researching about the special plan I'm working on with Morgan and will like to start drafting a corporate solicitation packet soon to get things goings.

As, for my ideas for this semester:



I would like to really look over the Appropriations Bylaws, so that they may be updated and refined where needed by this end of this semester.

I would like to see if it will be possible to get an increase in the percentage of the Student Activities Fee SGA gets to reflect the current grow of new student organizations on campus and over all the increasing demand for supply of funds.

Then I would like to create a proposal that would allow SGA to sponsor 1 big event per a semester. The way it will work is to have students vote through e-services between like 5 organizations that are planning an event to help through co-sponsorship. I think this will do a lot for SGA and student organizations, because it will get everyday students involved and engaged.


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Eddie Brunson

Week of September 8th:

Hey everyone,

Just as a heads up to anyone posting on the forums. Do not......I mean do not type your response in this window use Word instead. Then copy and past it here. I just lost 30 minutes worth of typing my long detialed list of what happened in the Appropriatiosn Commmetie.

Anywy so this post will be brief until I can get back to the SGA office to get my notes.

Anyway the Approrpriations committee heard 8 student organizations supplemental funding requests.

These request will include all or either, Start-up funding, program funding, of travel funding.

THe most interesting organization that the committee discussed in great detail about was Jhoom. Deatails will be added soon.

There waasn't enough time to have the Appropriations Committee make suggestions about the Ram Madness returned funds.

I have schedule with Sollie a meeting on Monday in the SGA office to go over how to go about getting everything she needs for Presidential Rounds tables.


Thanks,

Eddie
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Eddie Brunson