Bringing in a new treasurer

Most organizations change their officers at the end of the academic year, but SWIL changes at the end of the calendar year, for lots of good reasons that don't belong in this section. Typically the new treasurer will be a frosh, so the fall semester should be spent scoping out the incoming class to find someone who seems responsible, likely to stick with SWIL, and not disposed to absconding with SWIL funds.

To change treasurers, you have to go to the BC office (second floor of Tarble) and let them know we're changing officers. If the current treasurer goes the week before and lets them know this is about to happen, BC'll get the form ready that the new treasurer has to sign, and then they'll update their email list appropriately. If you're the old treasurer, it's nice to take the new one around the office and explain stuff, but there're notes on all that in this section too. The new treasurer should get a Treasurer's Handbook, and $<$drumroll$>$ read it. The relevant sections don't take that long to go through, but there are lots of good details to know about how BC policy changes from year to year.

We have money allocated to us in a bunch of subcodes. Money cannot be transferred from one subcode to another, even if you have a nice corresponding surplus and deficit. (The exception, I believe, is ``Special Events'', which is something you can go and ask BC about if we happen to have a large Special Event.) This is a list of those subcodes and what we use them for, with the weirdest stuff first.

• Publishing: This is for BEM. I went through a heck of a time with this, because publication funding is supposed to go through Forum for a Free Press. However, at least as of this writing, FFFP does not fund publications that distribute fewer than 500 copies, and we put out about 100-150 copies of BEM per year. You should check with FFFP to make sure they still won't fund us, so that you can then go crawling to Budget Committee and ask for money for our wonderful little magazine that FFFP won't fund because of their unfair rules, see? We asked $450 this year and got it. You'll just have to spend a little extra time on this subcode come Spring Budgeting; let the BC treasurer know your situation, and be ready to defend not getting money from FFFP during your meeting.

• Supplies: About $80. This is for stuff like caps for the cap guns for the Massacre, posterboard and markers for Activities Fair, tape for sticking up prop, and other miscellaneous supplies for official SWIL stuff. The biggest expense is the Pterodactyl Hunt. We need glow sticks and probably other random supplies, but we also need prizes (candy, and gift certificates for pizza). This is tricky, because BC doesn't allow funding for prizes, so we have to...improvise somewhat. It's a total of maybe $25 (which is really not much considering what other people scam for more illegal stuff). People usually have receipts for things that are nice, valid supplies. You know.

• Books: New books for Cordwainer are weird because we don't ask for this funding at Spring Budgeting, since we don't decide what we want until later. So you'll have to go to BC separately for this subcode. (More on that in Section 4.2.3.) We usually vote on a long list of books, get their retail prices from Amazon.com or something, and pick our top choices to total about $100. Then you go to BC with that itemized list and ask for funding. We then proceed to buy a lot more books at cheaper prices. (We could ask for funding for all the books we eventually buy, but then we'd have to find sales ahead of time, which is difficult.)

• Movies & Speakers: We have about $500 in this, I think. This is to cover both weekly movies and the Schlock film festival. The total for weekly movie rentals is something less than $100; most of our budget therefore goes to Schlock. Film reels can go for $100 or more, and we like to get those if we can, but sometimes we have to just get video tapes instead. Regardless, we have the full $400 to definitely cover our expenses.

• Photocopying: This is for propping events, especially weekly movies and Schlock. A handy rule to know: BC rules require that every public event be advertized with at least five signs each in Tarble, Sharples, and Parrish. We also want extra so we can prop Schlock a lot, as well as other events that may spontaneously come up and require signs (Bring Your Phone to Dinner Night, for example). We'll need more photocopying money than you think we do. You may have to go ask for more money if they don't give us full funding for it at Spring Budgeting. Then you can feel useful. When you're tracking our photocopying expenditures, keep in mind that the data from the copy code only comes through about once a month -- so be sure to check the date of the last transction before announcing how much money we have left.

• Transportation: This is just for renting one or two Swat vans for the Ren Faire trip at the beginning of the year. Each van is about $15, but you may want to try to get in touch with the van coordinator to find the exact price.