Oxford University Student Union has lost £41,447 in the 2007-08 financial year, suffering its biggest financial loss since 2005.
This information comes at the time when OUSU’s 2009/2010 budget comes under criticism and its company’s projected income for this year has staggeringly decreased by £28,000.
Documents obtained by Cherwell have revealed that OUSU had less than £18,630 net remaining at the end of Trinity 2008, after the financial year 2007-2008 brought a shocking loss of over £41,000.
Criticisms of the budget have been led by Ben Britton, the MCR co-President of St Catherine’s College. “The budget is far less specific than previous years, the numbers don’t add up and OUSU is at serious risk of a shortfall this year, which could bring it dangerously close to having less than zero net funds”, he said.
OUSU predicts that they will end the 2009/2010 year with a profit of only £110.
This will leave the organization far short of the estimated £100,000 target of reserves when registering as a charity later this year. It also puts the organization at a risk of huge financial shortfall, as will be forced to rely on unstable income.
The budget is based on an estimated £80,00 income from Oxford Student Services Limited (OSSL), OUSU’s trading arm. However, the accounts for 2008 show that OSSL only returned £15,109 to OUSU.
Similarly, this year’s projected income of OSSL has recently been dramatically reduced by £28,000, more than one the £19,161 cost of one sabbatical officer.
OUSU President Lewis Iwu has explained the difference in the accounts saying, “Both sets of figures are forecasts. Forecasts by their very nature change.”
OUSU further notes that its budget “is dependent upon earnings from OSSL which too often in the past have not materialised.” Further in the document, the Union emphasizes that it has taken a “conservative approach” in developing the budget.
OUSU is also relying on £91,857 worth of affiliation fees. This figure assumes no further disaffiliation or reaffiliations. With Christ Church, Balliol and Oriel college JCRs voting on whether or not to disaffiliate or reaffiliate just last week, affiliation fees could vary considerably in the next year from what has been budgeted.
One first year PPE student commented, “It’s ridiculous to have a student union that doesn’t seem to stand for anything or do anything useful and yet still see it losing money.”
Criticisms have also been raised about the detail of the budget, which lacks a lot of the detail of former years with much of the text having been directly copied from the previous budget. For example, previous reports detailed the amount of reserves and an invitation for comments, queries and concerns; this year’s did not.
Iwu has stated that he is willing to answer any questions about the specifics of the budget. He also said that several factors will ensure greater OSSL profitability.
He explained, “having a dedicated member of staff who will oversee the qualityof our publications will lead to more revenue being generated by our publications hence reducing the amount of forced discounts that we have had to give out to advertisers due to problems with publications.
“We also plan on exploiting web advertising more which is a lucrative market with little cost. Finally we will see a strategy in place next year to start selling fresher’s fair advertising earlier on in the year. We explained this to the University and they acknowledged these changes are key to getting better performance from OSSL.”
