I recommend a credit rating system for Student Association funding.
Student Association event funding currently works something like this: Your organization tells SA that 22 people will show up, and you spend $7 * 22 people = $154 on food. You request from SA to give your organization that funding. 17 people show up. By the $7 per person rule, SA grants only $119 for food. That means that $35 come out of the organization’s pocket.
However, if an organization consistently spends its money on exactly the right amount of food, then falls a little short one day, that organization is subject to the same penalty.
That is to say, a consistently responsible club is not formally rewarded or trusted. It is merely up to the financing body to determine how much funding the organization deserves.
Fortunately, SA’s Government Operations Committee (GOC) recently passed a bill allowing brackets to be implemented; however, these brackets can be too small or too large. If made too large, it increases the possibility of embezzlement. If made too small, it can restrict larger events in the funding they receive.
To alleviate these problems, I recommend a credit rating system be implemented for organizations that request funding. The credit system should incorporate payment history, length of history, size of events (which could be verified with random SA event head counts) and other variables as necessary.
That way, Student Association can more readily decide whether to trust organizations with money, whether an organization is attempting to embezzle funds and how well an organization spends its money.
One potential way that a credit rating system could factor in is by increasing the size of the brackets for projections. Of course, if the number of attendees for the event falls far towards one of the ends of those brackets, that will adversely affect your organizations credit score—but not your funding: Full funding will be granted if the number of attendees falls inside of that range.
I believe that a well-implemented credit score system could provide an excellent way to improve the trust and respect between Student Association and other organizations, penalize/discourage organizations that do not spend responsibly, and reward organizations that do spend responsibly.
