BY David Bocarsly
Last week, the Undergraduate Students Association Council voted to invest $100,000 into an endowment fund that would return money to student programming each year. This unprecedented decision takes tangible steps toward stabilizing USAC funds and supporting student group programming, two of my goals for this year.
USAC has fluctuating amounts of surplus – unspent money from the previous year – every year, which leads to uncertainty in funding allocations for each subsequent year. During the 2011-2012 school year, USAC struggled to fund student programs due to a smaller-than-average surplus and had to cut all allocations in half, severely harming student programming.
Established organizations that had expected to receive funding for meaningful, annual events suffered alongside younger groups that were unable to fund new goals and positively contribute to our campus. This year’s higher surplus allowed the current council to take actions that would prevent similar situations in the future. The result is the endowment fund.
The purpose of this endowment is to take $100,000 from our excess surplus and invest it in a fund that will return approximately 5 percent interest each year to student programming.
With an annual investment of $100,000 from surplus funding and constant returns of 5 percent, the fund will generate $5,000 in its first year and increase to $100,000 by its 20th year.
In those two decades, the endowment fund will already have earned a total of more than a million dollars. If no additional money is invested into the fund after that 20th year, it will still be generating $100,000 in interest each year for student programming.
Our $100,000 investment this year, coupled with annual investments in the coming years, will soon be generating $100,000 per year, forever.
While $5,000 may seem like a paltry sum compared to the much larger amount necessary for student programming, $5,000 today will easily become $100,000 20 years from now, and continued investment means continued growth. In this struggling economy, we have a direct understanding of how difficult it is to establish financial stability when events like lower surpluses occur. Every dollar really can make a difference.
We, as college students, should know best about investments – ours being the years that we invest into our education. Similarly, this endowment fund is an investment for the future that will stabilize a financial inflow to student programming and allow student leaders to focus on their passions, not funding issues.
There is an age-old adage that comes to mind when thinking of the future of the endowment fund and our university. It goes like this – a society becomes great when people plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. That society is our university and those trees are the endowment fund that your support has made possible. Together, we are pushing this university further along the path toward greatness by thinking beyond our generation and into the future.
An event such as this is unprecedented because it is difficult for a council that is elected for such a short term to think about long-term consequences. With one year in office, it is much too easy to neglect the future and focus on the present.
I am proud to lead a council that has chosen to be fiscally responsible, forward thinking and fully prepared for less-than-ideal circumstances that could very well occur in coming years.
What better way is there to spend surplus money than to invest in the future of USAC and student programming? This year, 2013, begins a legacy of financial consistency, stability and sustainability for the benefit of all Bruins to come.
Bocarsly is president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council and a fourth-year economics student.