Post Number Three: Budget
Allocation Assignment
Written by Mark Chipperfield
The premise
of this assignment was that the high school whose budget we were in charge of
had an athletic budget of $120,000. However the needs of the teams and athletes
were greater than the $120,000 budget that was available to us. We were allowed
to have four fundraiser’s that would gain $60 per participant in that sport
along with a $20,000 donation from an alum of the school to help buffer the
expenses. So the major decisions that we needed to make was what teams we were
going to have fund-raise and then what teams were going to get their extra
expenses paid for with the leftover money.
The first thing our group did when
presented with this assignment was to add up all the necessary expenses.
Overall we found that the necessary expenses of the athletic department were
$148,350 meaning we were over budget by a fair amount. The next step was to
figure out what teams we were going to force to take part in fundraisers. We
decided to go with a realistic mixture of teams with a large number of
participants as well as successful teams that would generate excitement if they
actually had a fundraiser. The four teams we chose were the football team (largest
number of participants), the softball team (1st in conference), the
downhill skiing team (1st in conference) and the women’s track and
field team (2nd largest number of participants). After doing all the
math we found out that all that fundraising would raise $11,040 for the
athletic program. So we added that $11,040 with the $20,000 donation and the
current $120,000 budget to figure out the total money we could spend on
athletics. The sum of those three ended up being $151,040. Next we subtracted
the $148,350 needed for necessary expenses from $151,040 and found that we had
only $2,690 dollars to spend on extra expenses for the sports teams. The three
things that we decided to spend that excess money on were new jerseys for the
men’s and women’s soccer teams (both are successfully 3rd in the
conference) as well as new shot puts for the women’s track and field team. The
reason why the women’s track and field team got new shot puts is because they
participated in a fundraiser while finishing second in their conference.
Nathan Wahle Comment:
ReplyDeleteThis assignment did a great job of simulating the difficult decisions and tough situations athletic directors often find themselves in. What we as a group did not even consider was cutting sports. Cutting sports is an option and decision that many athletic directors face. The decision to do so provides much more room to play with financially; however, we as a group felt that everyone should have an opportunity to participate in sports and not only that but have a wide variety to choose from. So even though that means cutting it close with the budget and not being able to address every sport's wants and needs we felt that at least they are getting the opportunity to play.
I want to go further on what Nate said about cutting sports. To me personally cutting sports should never be an option. This option is one that can be so unfair to any parties involved, and can be a very large shame for the university. For our school directly, we have had experiences with this. When Title IX came about multiple sport teams were cut, including the male track and field team. This was a huge loss to the university, but also to one specific alumni who was a gold medal winner in the Olympics. It was amazing to me to find out a school would take the easy way out and cut a program with such a great story coming out of it. Before class I had never knew this, but after learning about it I was amazed that we could do that to a program with such a history. To me cutting a program should never be an option, and it should be avoided at all costs. This is the reason our group proactively worked to not cut any programs in our assignment.
ReplyDeleteThe Previous Comment Was Made by Brady Munger
DeleteI agree with Brady. The way I view things or what it often comes back to when talking about cutting men's sports is football. Now, I'm most specifically talking at the collegiate level now. Football tends to be the culprit of male sports being cut because they take up a large amount of the men athletic scholarships. So, I am not one hundred percent sure this would work but am more posing the question of "Would it be reasonable to take away full ride scholarships from the football team or at least issue more partial rather than full scholarships, in order to keep other men's sports such as men's trach and field?" Basically, in my view high school sports should rarely/never be cut because the participation factor outweighs financial priorities. College is different in that maybe we can find better ways to distribute scholarships in order to keep more sports and provide more opportunities.
ReplyDeleteNathan Wahle
Good summary of how you decided to balance the budget in the assignment in class. I am glad you did not feel that you needed to cut any sports. You took a different approach than others in thinking that the more successful teams might be able to generate money more easily because of their success. Some might see that as punishment to have to do fund-raising. But you did what seemed fair to the program.
ReplyDelete