Concord Academy just rolled out a new club funding system, pooling all profits and money into a communal fund. But where is the incentive to fundraise? How can clubs be equally endowed? Why did we change the system in the first place?
The administration has been working on this new system for over a year, largely due to the unethical use of clubs for personal materialistic gain. In recent years, students have been effectively laundering money from bookstore accounts (paid for by other parents’ money) for extravagant and materialistic objectives. Speakers, expensive jackets, and copious amounts of takeout are only a few of the examples of avarice that our community has shown. Given the circumstances, the administration's primary goal with the new system is to ensure that club funding is used for the benefit of the entire community.
The solution? All club money has been pooled into a communal fund. As of now, the communal fund holds around 30,000 dollars, made up of money from active and inactive clubs (whose money has been sitting around for some time). Clubs can now apply to withdraw money, and grant requests are evaluated on the following criteria before approval: alignment with the club’s mission, benefit to the whole school community, feasibility and quality of planning, fiscal responsibility, and a clear budget. Collaboration with other clubs is also highly encouraged. Small withdrawals may not require a grant, but the communal fund ensures that funding is distributed to carefully planned and beneficial activities. It also serves to put to use the thousands of stagnant dollars from inactive club funds.
The new system brings up a whole new array of issues with freedom and incentive that the previous club system did not offer. After talking with multiple club coheads, many clubs were simply not selling at Club Expo, giving out free food after paying for it with the communal fund, and turning the event into a net loss for the entire club fund. While the new system may finally prevent embezzlement, it also allows for clubs to sit back and use the money provided by the fund without fair contribution. There may be systems in place for withdrawal vs contribution, but those systems must be fair to prevent further exploitation of others' labor/contributions for the communal fund. Furthermore, the freedom of club funds has become bound by the guidelines of withdrawal. Most of the criteria listed are completely reasonable, but ensuring benefit to the whole school community is frankly quite hard to demand. Clubs are meant as a space for the entire community, and yet each club has its own agenda. Obviously the benefit should not be for a specific group, that’s why this new system was instated in the first place, but more thought should be put into the guidelines to allow for rock climbing club to get rock climbing gear, or fishing club to buy bait. Opportunities to join clubs and participate in events should be equitably open to the entire community, but funding itself is for the clubs use.
We must not forget that the new system seeks to mend the misuse problem, but the root of the problem is what needs to be addressed. What has our community come to, to be exploiting the previous club funding system for so much personal benefit? Who decided it was ok to take bookstore money, real money from parents, from raffles and fundraising just to spend on personal wealth? How in the world does such abuse of privilege align with common trust? How can we ensure that we don’t exploit the community we have worked so hard to uphold, again? Whether the system changes or not, it is our responsibility to hold our morals firm and our actions accountable. Without that, we cannot say that common trust lives on.