@@http://tinyurl.com/6wgaylg@@Confusion and concern have arisen regarding how the Club Sports budget’s Supplemental/Contingency Fund — that received a 100 percent increase this year — will be spent. The Club Sports Executive Committee @@http://clubsports.uoregon.edu/join@@expects to send teams to request money from Senate while still having a surplus of funds, which ASUO Senate would be hesitant to accommodate.

The increase from $20,000 to $40,000 was included as a line-item in the budget last year as a way to alleviate the stress put on the Senate each year. Typically, teams would ask for surplus funds to assist with costs associated with travel to national tournaments and events.

“The reason they received this increase was for the past several years, Senate was seeing around $30,000 in requests from surplus to fund Club Sports’ national trips,” Senator Kaitlyn Lange said@@http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kaitlyn-lange/21/6bb/965@@. “This was a large burden on surplus, so in order to alleviate some of this stress we institutionalized an increase so Club Sports could handle more of their requests internally.”

Currently, the Supplemental Fund has $21,000 left for the remainder of this fiscal year and teams still able to qualify for national events on their respective schedules. One reason for the excess of money available is that the Executive Committee uses an algorithm that includes variables such as whether a team has made their necessary fundraising quota to determine how much of a team’s request to grant them.

This year’s algorithm is similar to the one used last year, with half the amount of funds. Lange disagrees with the use of a mathematical formula as a major determinant for funding.

“The allocation of money should be on a case-by-case basis,” Lange said. “I don’t think an algorithm works … I think the process should be looked at again. They should spend as much as they can, as that was the intent for the increase.”

The use of the algorithm has resulted in $3,575 being the highest amount of money allocated to a single team from the Supplemental Fund this year. If that amount were allocated to the three teams remaining in contention for national events, there would be a surplus of more than $10,000.

However, Club Sports Executive Laurel Hess@@http://clubsports.uoregon.edu/committee@@ expects to send at least one team to Senate for additional funding and to distribute the remaining money across Club Sports.
“We are anticipating men’s Ultimate and men’s lacrosse to (go) before Senate,” Hess said. “It’s always hard toward the end of the year to receive large requests, because we know the money might run out and we don’t want to deny a group funding. The large requests from Club Sports, while exciting, mean that running out of money becomes a closer reality.
“Once (nationals) are over, we’re probably going to go back and open it up to all of the teams to apply for that extra money, and they can apply for any reason,” Hess said. “We’ll just take basic budget applications and try to allocate it that way as fairly as possible.”
Lange wasn’t pleased with the idea of a student group asking Senate for money when they still had available funds.
“If that money is meant to cover all of Club Sports supplemental expenses, then Senate will not be hearing any requests until that money is spent,” Lange said. “When that fund is depleted, and they have no more resources, that’s when Senate steps in. I can completely respect that they choose not to give them (more) money if they did not fulfill those obligations, and it does not look good when a group cannot fulfill their own obligations, and they come to another group to fill their gap.
“We will not fund something if there’s money in that account.”