A Guide on Club Finances

A place to discuss topics affecting quizbowlers as a community rather than quizbowl as a game.
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Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!
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A Guide on Club Finances

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

Strong quiz bowl clubs that last season after season and with completely different teams over time because of two things: good leadership and proficient knowledge of club finances to support attending as many tournaments as possible or other events. While I intend to discuss my lessons learned over my time in high school and collegiate club leadership in a later post, I'd like to focus today on giving some advice on club finances - good things to know, some warnings of what not to do, and ideas for different clubs to go about finances.

One note: this post is not to "call out" people for making mistakes in finances. In fact, the entirety of things I disprove of in this post are mistakes I've made in the past and I've learned from. My goal is to try and give the advice I wish I had when I started taking on more responsibilities.

Another note: I'll be discussing my time at the University of Iowa and the institutions they had there. Every school is different though with how they structure their club administration and finances, so you may not have the same experience I've had.

Part 0: Some Vocabulary

Before I jump right in, I want to establish some terms that I use throughout this post just to make sure anyone from the experienced community member to the newest quiz bowl team can use the guide.

Housewrites are typically one-of tournaments in which a team of writers and editors produce a single set for a year. Some housewrites are run with the same or similar teams from year to year (Penn Bowl, EFT, etc), but they are different from being paid like a normal job because the payment typically comes after the set is being done played (usually at the end of the academic competition year).

Mirror Fees are a portion of a host school's income from a tournament they pay to the writers/editors of the set they used in return for allowing them to use the set for a tournament. Mirror fees can vary: for high school sets, they're typically between 10 and 20 dollars per team, whereas for college sets, they're closer to the 40 to 50 dollars for a team range.


Part 1: Why are finances and methods around them important?

At the local level, quiz bowl is largely a non-profit activity, and most of the money spent within the game stays within the community. Teams pay other schools to attend tournaments, and most of those funds typically stay within the club and are paid out to attend other tournaments. Mirror fees pay writers, staffers, and sustain large organizations like NAQT and ACF which in turn provide the highest quality of events in the game.

With this being said, being prompt and delivering payments in full is vital for keeping the community alive. Let's say, for instance, I run a mirror of the tournament ABC, and one team hasn't paid me yet for a few weeks. This becomes an issue because I have to pay the mirror fees for the tournament to ABC's team. If I don't do this promptly, then ABC has to wait to pay their writers and editors. Because of the way quiz bowl is structured with tournaments run throughout the year garnering money, this already means writers have to wait almost a year from set completion to pay day, so trying to speed up this process as much as possible if much appreciated and courteous to writers.

This one team now paying creates a dilemma for the host. I could pay all of the mirror fees to complete my end of the deal for using the set without the team's payment; however, I'd be cutting into the money I'd have saved up, which could mean I can't afford to send a team to a tournament soon. Or, I could keep pestering this other team for the money, which slows down the payment time for writers. Clearly, these issues would be resolved by prompt payment, however, as I'm about to discuss, this isn't always an issue of people being "lazy" and not paying. There are significant time sinks and barriers to teams for paying tournaments at an administrative level.

Part 2: What difficulties exist in doing club finances?

For context, I spent three years doing finances for the University of Iowa's club team. My freshman year was the first year we had gotten serious about playing and started attending tournaments. I had to figure out the infrastructure to doing club administrative activities (finances being one of them). And let me say, oh my god, it was horrendous.

How Iowa works is that there was a Student Activities Office which authorized and worked with clubs like ours. A separate entity we worked with was the Student Business Office, which managed the finances of clubs. These were two different institutions with different people.

On top of that, the way finances worked at Iowa was that the University collected student activities fees as part of tuition, which was then given to the Student Government to create a fund of over $1 million to then distribute to the organization. The way this distribution was done was that there is a Finance Committee to which organizations could make requests. The committee reviewed requests every two weeks as part of a system of funding periods, to which they would publish the dates. We had money in a university account every year that I was never really sure how/why it was there? But it was a good back-up fund.

So already there are three big organizations with different responsibilities our club had to work through. With that being said, there were a lot of hiccups. I'm going to list below the problems we as a club faced:
  • Student Government was awful at communicating. My freshman year, they kept reviewing and returning our finance requests for ACF Nationals because they had questions and wouldn't approve the request until the questions were answered...to which we would respond immediately, but they would take a week to respond. By the time our request was approved to travel to Philadelphia for the tournament, plane costs were 4 times the amount we had originally requested, so we had to drive out there. I later discovered the chair of the Finance Committee was running for Student Body President and had ignored most of her responsibilities during this time.
  • There was a large amount of paperwork to do. Now, this is something to get used to, as universities want to make sure their money is going to real activities and is being used to represent the University in a positive light. However, there was never a clear guide on what paperwork I needed when. For instance, sending a check for ACF Fall to Rice University this past year involved over 70 emails between me, the Business Office, and Rice to fill out paperwork, get signatures, and clarify things. This was frustrating for everyone involved.
  • Student Government continually failed to clarify conditions around funding periods. This past year, they just never created a calendar for when the funding period began and ended every two weeks, so I missed out on creating an early enough request for one of our tournaments and had to pay out of pocket. Also, they failed to notify us of restrictions we could make per funding period on requests, so when I tried to correct the previous problem by making all our requests at the beginning of the year, we had requests denied, so I had to jump through extra hoops to make the money come through.
From these examples, the main issues I ran into with finances were:
  • Improper Communication with University Services
  • Failure to plan deadlines and keep a calendar of both quiz bowl events and finance deadlines
  • A lack of understanding of how University finances worked and the paperwork required
Part 3: Tips for Success

Now, it's time to turn around and discuss about what you CAN do to avoid these problems and have smooth sailing with your club's finances.

Communicate Effectively

The first step to success is figuring out what you need to do at your club to acquire and pay money according to University standards. There are people at your University whose sole job is to help you with this, and they have an office on campus you can either freely walk into to ask questions, or schedule an appointment to go in. Iowa had both of these. You need to reach out and understand how you can learn about finances - be it from previous club leadership who did the job before you, university organization, the leadership of other clubs on campus, student government, etc.

Simultaneously, if you're having issues or don't understand how to manage the finances between your club and another quiz bowl club or quiz bowl organization, please let them know this. Chances are, they can help you find a solution or give you more time to finalize a financial transaction. Do not go long stretches of time without communicating to people you owe money to, or that owe money to you. For example, when I was having trouble paying people through Iowa for staffing ACF Winter, I worked with ACF to send the money to them so they could pay the staffers. More often than not, if you're encountering a problem, there's a solution out there, and you just need to find someone who can help you fix it.

Make Friends

In doing finances, you interact with the same people at the University level, neighboring clubs, and national organizations. It definitely helps to make bonds with these people so you can cooperate better and that they're also more likely to help you out or go out of their way to help you. For instance, after helping saving our ACF Nationals trip, I gave a thank you card signed by our team to the Student Business Office workers who guided us through the administrative process. For the next two years, they were always very helpful in responding to emails or doing paperwork for us which I feel in a normal circumstance, they may have been less open to helping with or perhaps would have even denied. This is a minor step, but is like oil keeping the gears going.

Understand the Process

Here's the scary part: as a treasurer, you're expected to have a basic understanding of:
  • How much money you have available
  • How to access, receive, and send out that money
  • How to raise money to fund events
  • What additional paperwork you need to complete to send out money
If you don't know something you need to know who to ask in order to get that information. Into my very last semester, I was still emailing with questions about different forms and payment I needed to complete. Get into a routine of completing finances request paperwork time after time. Get into a habit of putting in funds requests to the University organizations that provide them.

Part 4: In-Depth Guide from Acquiring Money to Paying for a Tournament

I'll now relay the process I would go through at Iowa to pay for a tournament. Again, this may not be exactly what you have at your University, but may be similar.

1. Determine the tournament date, who is going, and the number of teams.

You need a price tag before you can pay! Try and plan at the beginning of your academic year what tournaments you want to attend and try to finalize at least a number of teams. Especially in recruiting semesters, a lot of people will sign up for events early, then drop. Put a cap on teams so you can get the finances in order ASAP. The cost of a team to attend a tournament can also include discounts based on things such as if the team is undermanned. DO NOT CREATE TEAMS FOR THE PURPOSE OF GETTING A DISCOUNT IF IT IS BASED ON COMPOSITION. This is a VERY slippery slope. I like to say this: make a request like you're not getting any discounts based on team composition (but factoring in things like distance, buzzers, etc), because you can always save or give back money to your club account.

2. Make a budget request to whoever give your organization funds, or put together money otherwise.

Now that I know how many teams and the basic details of the tournament, I could make a budget request to Student Government. They typically need a justification of what the event is, why you're going, what it will look like, etc. I like to talk about quiz bowl as an activity, mention our success or involvement of new players/undergrads, etc. It's a nice touch. You'll likely have to provide "proof of expense." This could be an invoice, or I've taken a screenshot of the forum post with costs listed and the tournament name clearly stated. At Iowa, funding requests needed to be submitted at least two weeks before the event takes place to make sure it was seen in a funding period. I know at Carleton College, for instance, their funding period is entirely at the beginning of one semester for the entire semester, so it's important to be prompt and get teams together for the semester based on your circumstances.

3. Complete other paperwork needed to authenticate and attend the tournament with Student Organization admin.

At Iowa, we needed to notify admin with a "Prior to Travel" form and the rosters of our teams before events so they could keep tabs on who was going in case of an emergency. Also, you want to make sure you're following all of the procedures of your University so you can pay out from University funds. I feel bad saying "be sure to complete the paperwork" again and again, but because every school is different, I can't establish more.

4. Find out BEFORE the tournament how you should pay.

Communicate with the host to see what payment methods are available and how they compare to what methods you have available. Typically, a check is the best way to go at Iowa, but we had access to digital payment options (but I advised against it since they took a fraction of our fees). At an in-person event, checks and cash are two things a host should be prepared to collect in accordance with University policy. For instance, I had to rent a lockbox from the Business Office and complete a paysheet to make sure all the money was legit. Paying with a third party app such as Venmo or PayPal differs from University to University. This is because the income from quiz bowl is shielded from taxes due to being a student organization activity. If it becomes personal/exchanges personal hands, it could be something those involved have to list on their taxes, which is not fun.

5. Play the tournament and pay ASAP.

If you're paying in cash or check, try and bring it to the tournament with you. Checks can also be sent in the mail, but are easy enough to get in hand if you plan out paying far enough before the tournament. If you play the tournament before you pay, this isn't a big deal: in fact, it's a norm for payment to take a little while. However, make sure you can try and deliver it a week or two after the event if possible.

Part 5: Raising Money Outside of School Support

In college, I was privileged enough to have the University provide some amount of support financially to quiz bowl. However, there are hundreds of schools that don't do this, or may have methods that complicate this process. Thus, students may have to rely on their own to raise money to play events. This gets expensive really fast - especially for Nationals trips. I will leave this thread open for more discussion, but in high school, I had to raise money to pay for our first trip to HSNCT. Here's some things that we did.
  • The classic: run a trivia night. Put in a pay-in and be sure to create some prizes for teams. I recommend writing the questions to have a personal flavor for your school. Blending pop culture and quiz bowl content in a 50/50 combo is what we did.
  • Use a fundraising website. You'd be surprised how much people around you want to see you succeed and would chip in some money to do so. While its unsustainable to do this in the long run, fundraising for a big Nationals trip is reasonable. Ask family, quiz bowl mentors, community members, business sponsors (!) - the horizons are open here.
  • Host tournaments! As mentioned before, this is a good way to pay for events. In Iowa's experience, hosting one event could pay for us to bring about 2-3 teams to another event. May be a bit exhausting if this is the only fundraising method you use, but is a good way to be involved in the community.
  • Writing a set as a club is always an option, but is a little wonky since it may be more worthwhile just to have the money go to the writers of a club set, who then use it to pay for attendance.
Part 6: Conclusion

Finances can be difficult, but there's a lot of people out there who can help. I hope this guide gave a good starting place for where to think about finances. I'd be happy to edit this post to embellish points, add missing points, and further discuss this matter.
Ganon Evans
Misconduct Representative
ACF President, PACE VP of Editing, MOQBA
Francis Howell High School 2018, University of Iowa 2021
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cchiego
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Re: A Guide on Club Finances

Post by cchiego »

This is an outstanding post. One of the more frustrating aspects of quizbowl finance is that each club will usually face a unique gauntlet of financial procedures, so that it's very hard to put together one guide that will cover everything. Ganon's post did a great job in emphasizing the more general points that everyone should take into account like making friends with people in the various offices that you interact with, finding out well in advance how to pay for events, and making sure to handle payments ASAP.

A few quick things to add:

Club finances should be open books. If people ask where the money goes, you should be able to show where the money goes. Club officers in particular should double-check the club's finances semesterly just to make sure it's clear. Ideally, a shared Google Sheet of expenses and revenues could serve this role well. On a related note, those with access to club funds should only spend club funds with the explicit permission of other people in the club and for quizbowl-related purposes, barring some kind of emergency.

Student governments should not be trifled with. Yes, they can be bureaucratic and, as Ganon's example shows, sometimes extraordinarily slow to respond. However, they control the purse-strings and are more than happy to permanently re-allocate whatever they give to a quizbowl club to some other cause, so make sure that you're following the correct procedure, staying in touch, and showing up to meetings. Transitions between old and new leadership can be prime times for financial deadlines, forms, and other procedures to get forgotten or lost, so make sure to bring new club leaders up to speed on those as soon as possible.

There are many potential sources of funding on college campuses. Ganon's post went through several excellent ideas, but there are plenty of other lesser-known sources on campus that you may be able to tap for one-time or recurring funds. Honors programs, various administrators (Provosts, Vice-Provosts, Deans, etc.), alumni organizations, specific long-forgotten funds for academic competitions, interdisciplinary programs (e.g. a "liberal studies" program), etc. all might be willing to chip in to help a quizbowl team, especially for things like nationals trips. Always ask around.
Chris C.
Past: UGA/UCSD/Penn
Present: Solano County, CA
marianna
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Re: A Guide on Club Finances

Post by marianna »

Thanks for this helpful guide! Two quick things to add from my experience as a treasurer:

Create and maintain documentation to pass on to future club officers (and if possible, overlap briefly with your successor to train them.) Passing on previous club budgets (particularly if your club requests money on a longer term year-to-year basis, as many schools such as UChicago do) and club/university-specific instructions on how to manage club finances, who to talk to, student government/club finances resources, and important deadlines can help maintain continuity of funding and ease a new treasurer into the potentially scary duties of managing a large budget. Budgets and documentation can be stored for instance in a shared club Google Drive whose permissions are updated to include incoming club officers.

Establish maximally-inclusive club financial policies and coordinate with other club officers so financial expectations are transparent to current/prospective club members. Club financial policies might include consideration of what expenses are expected to be personal expenses and what expenses are covered by the club (and if so, whether the club can pay directly or whether a club member must pay out-of-pocket and submit some kind of documentation for reimbursement; ideally direct payments are maximized, reimbursements are fast, and any necessary personal expenses are minimized), and whether there is a mechanism to secure financial accommodations from the club if a club member cannot pay the minimal expected personal expenses (ideally such a mechanism would ensure privacy, eg contacting the club advisor directly rather than contacting fellow students/club officers). After establishing such policies, treasurers can coordinate with whichever club officer announces upcoming events (eg overnight trips to tournaments, day trips to tournaments, social events) to clearly communicate these expectations and policies for each upcoming event to club members, which can help make club events more accessible to low-income club members. Treasurers can also coordinate with whichever club officer works on recruitment to be explicit and transparent about the financial (+time) expectation from club members (eg whether or not there's a membership fee/dues), which can help low-income prospective club members evaluate joining.
Marianna Zhang (she/her)
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Jack
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Re: A Guide on Club Finances

Post by Jack »

I've been wanting to make a post that touches on similar topics to this for a while, and what I have to say could warrant a different thread entirely, but for the sake of contributing I'll include what I had drafted here below. This was going to be a post about ways in which I thought college quiz bowl needed to be improved. Marianna's comment also made me remember this, and I really agree with her points (and will say the same things in some parts).

The reason I'm using one example from this is because I felt that the issue of fronting personal money for tournaments, or paying for tournaments on behalf of a club outright, is an issue that needs to be discussed and hopefully will become less and less common.

The TL;DR takeaway is as follows: There is often a tension between quick payments and following proper procedure. Fast payments, as others have pointed out, are absolutely necessary, but the implicit expectation that many (some?) seem to have that people should use "unofficial funds," which often times just means personal money out-of-pocket, is not sustainable and impacts some students worse than others and is a barrier for students of lesser means. Getting familiar with bureaucracy has a twofold benefit because it foremost makes "official" payment routes easier, but also means that clubs you pay will have the funds to pay their liabilities, as well. In general, I think clubs and college qb orgs should strive to make things more centralized and easier going forward, which is a broad goal that includes things like payment centralization and better scheduling so clubs have as easy as possible a time in budgeting, planning, and getting approval for things. In the meantime, club leaders need to familiarize themselves with their university's bureaucracy, be proactive in dealing with other groups' bureaucracies, and schedule things in advance to make official payment and approval as easy as possible.
As a disclaimer, let me foremost state that I was not a low income college student. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed a lot of things in quiz bowl, from my experience, that clearly present a barrier to either playing or participating in club life. Foremost among these is what seems to be an ‘implied expectation’ for club officers to pay for or front tournament fees or mirror fees using their own money, especially in clubs where “official payment methods” are cumbersome. I think most people would agree that it is not uncommon for students, especially officers, to either front money for their club or even pay for tournaments with their own money. I know that as President of my club I did this numerous times, both because it is easier from my end and because I felt obligated to make it as seamless as possible for the host of the tournament(s) we attended (rather than trouble them with the necessary forms they would need to fill out to get their payment). Having hosted and talked with other teams, I know that many other teams do this too, on occasion, and have also seen teams pay with personal checks at tournaments, or used their own cash presumably to be reimbursed by the club later. One could chalk this up as club-specific problems, but as some of the discussion from this post from a while back demonstrates, it’s clear that many people view this norm of payment with personal funds as something that should be expected in certain situations. I think it’s clear why this is a barrier to low income students, especially if they want to serve as officers or fulfil any role that sees the exchange of quiz bowl money. As evident in that thread, the person at Princeton who preceded me as club president, Jared, ran into these issues. Jared is/was a FLI college student, and he, as both that thread and my own hearing of him saying as such, spent a vast majority of literally all the money he had on quiz bowl as president, money which, to this day, he hasn’t seen back and won’t get back given that these events’ invoices are either lost to time, would be too old to be processed without great difficulty/suspicion, or never existed in the first place, and the money in the club bank account he expected to be there wasn’t there at the time to repay him (coincidentally, because other clubs hadn't paid us hundreds of dollars on-time for attending one of our tournaments). In these situations, one might say that teams simply shouldn’t go to tournaments if they don’t have the money, which I would agree with in general and in hindsight with this particular situation, but it’s definitely true that clubs with people or officers who can pay to play often do so when their clubs are also stretched for cash, which makes it a disparity. Even in the event that clubs do have money to pay for the tournaments, it could be the case that previous officers may have used their own money to pay for things for simplicity, and, seeking to uphold the implicit norm of “making it easier” on the club/the officers and tournament hosts when paying for things, feel obligated to keep paying out of pocket rather than go through more arduous bureaucratic channels. Whereas costs like turnpike fees, train tickets, etc, can often be more manageable (though not always!) if planned in advance, registration fees are often hundreds of dollars, especially for larger clubs. Other things, too, like paying for NAQT sets at tournament hosting; perhaps a club historically just has officers pay for it with their own money (often 100s of dollars) then get reimbursed with club funds. That is a big ask for low income students to do. At Princeton, I luckily had access to a student org credit card that can be used instead, but I’m sure not all schools may have access to something like this.

Again, I am not a low-income college student, so I do not claim to be an expert on the experience of low-income students in quiz bowl, and don't want to speak for their behalf. I simply just wish to acknowledge a problem and how things I've seen and experienced presumably exacerbate said problem.
Budgeting, as Ganon brought up, is super important so that situations where the need to front money to be reimbursed later is less of an issue -- though I recognize that fronting money to be reimbursed later still may be required for many schools given the lack of convenient, official payment channels, at least for now. Ultimately, I think that clubs should make sure they are being inclusive on this front internally, and hosts and organizations should make sure we are willing and ready to confront the bureaucracy head on. Even if it means your payment is not as immediate as you would like, it might be for a very good reason. Fronting expenses out of pocket is simply not an option for some people. Outside/secret bank accounts can be great for schools who are able to do it, but for many clubs it is prohibited and risks serious sanctions for doing so.

Additionally, I think college qb needs to be more standardized about how payments and finances are handled. In an ideal world, it would be great if there were a way for tournaments to easily pay for all events through official means. Earlier scheduled events with mirrors planned further in advance, too, would help clubs apply for funding earlier and make the approval process easier, benefitting everyone. In an ideal world, one might imagine someone like ACF's role evolving to be a centralized hub that manages college quiz bowl, distributing funds, selecting housewrites, and taking a more proactive role in scheduling things.

To refer back to Marianna's post,
marianna wrote: Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:27 am Establish maximally-inclusive club financial policies and coordinate with other club officers so financial expectations are transparent to current/prospective club members. Club financial policies might include consideration of what expenses are expected to be personal expenses and what expenses are covered by the club (and if so, whether the club can pay directly or whether a club member must pay out-of-pocket and submit some kind of documentation for reimbursement; ideally direct payments are maximized, reimbursements are fast, and any necessary personal expenses are minimized), and whether there is a mechanism to secure financial accommodations from the club if a club member cannot pay the minimal expected personal expenses (ideally such a mechanism would ensure privacy, eg contacting the club advisor directly rather than contacting fellow students/club officers). After establishing such policies, treasurers can coordinate with whichever club officer announces upcoming events (eg overnight trips to tournaments, day trips to tournaments, social events) to clearly communicate these expectations and policies for each upcoming event to club members, which can help make club events more accessible to low-income club members. Treasurers can also coordinate with whichever club officer works on recruitment to be explicit and transparent about the financial (+time) expectation from club members (eg whether or not there's a membership fee/dues), which can help low-income prospective club members evaluate joining.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything, and I regret not doing some of the things she talks about while I was an officer after learning later how some members felt stressed about sharing some costs for things, so I hope you, the prospective or current club officer reading this, thinks critically about implementing these things. I also recognize that depending on club's financial situations, it may actually be necessary for people to pay out of pocket. But I think it will really benefit the community as a whole to take proactive measures, in one's own club and community wide, to minimize the circumstances in which anyone has to weigh their own financial security against participation in the first place. Hence, why I think things like reliance on fronting funds or relying on personal accounts, and officers fronting costs for their team, while very convenient in the short run, present barriers, and in the long run doing things like budgeting, getting comfortable with the bureaucracy, and qb stakeholders establishing community goals to structure their clubs and qb as a whole towards an inclusive financial future are essential.
Jack
Bermudian Springs HS
Princeton University '21
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