ABC Update: Town Hall Recap & Run for the 2024-2025 ABC Board
Thank you for your attendance and participation in last night’s town hall. I hope that you found the experience helpful and informative. The ABC Town Hall slides can be found at this address.
Dear ABC Student Group Leaders,
Thank you for your attendance and participation in last night’s town hall. I hope that you found the experience helpful and informative. The ABC Town Hall slides can be found at this address: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HoT_oFDXQdot1XrWyaYpJ7ngxZD0H5_4/view?usp=sharing
Special shoutouts go to Columbia University Science Fiction Society, Mālama Hawai'i, and the Chess Club for posting upcoming events in LionLink. Please remember that we will be requiring these postings for events without a preset RSVP list starting February 15th, 2024.
I thank our representatives on the board, especially those who presented last night. ABC is a collection of interest groups and views; we make our decisions in the same spirit.
Last night, I spoke about the value of serving on the Activities Board. After countless interactions and years of growth through various positions, I can affirm whole-heartedly that my Columbia journey has been made more complete by my participation in ABC. Without question, I have all of you - student leaders - to thank. :)
Sincerely,
Theodore M. Nelson
ABC President
ABC Representative Elections 2024-2025
ABC has announced its 2024-2025 election timeline. Please file your candidacy by filling out the following document and emailing it to [email protected]. We have prescribed the following deadlines for this semester:
Candidacy Filing: Feb. 13th at 11:59 p.m. EDT
Voting Opens: Feb. 21st by EOD
Voting Closes: Feb. 28th by 8:00 p.m. EDT
Following the elections, ABC will facilitate a series of three transition meetings, on March 6th, March 20th, and March 27th, 2024. A new e-board and representative board will be sworn in on March 27th, 2024.
LionLink Usage Requirements
As announced, we have three new modalities for how student groups are required to interact with LionLink.
1.] Fall Programming Recap! Thank you to the 30 groups who have submitted a news article in LionLink recapping their fall programming. We will be reconciling this town hall requirement and emailing groups who failed to submit at our February 7th meeting. If you do not have a submission or encounter difficulties accessing LionLink by then, please reach out to your ABC representative. A video tutorial is available: https://youtu.be/eT_MkcusIv4
2.] Co-Sponsorships! Please submit future cosponsorships through the LionLink form entitled: “ABC Cosponsorship Form - Spring 2024. A video tutorial is available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuRB9e1DRko
3.] Event Posting! When requesting governing board approval for an FTF associated with an event without a set RSVP list, especially if it is open to the wider Columbia community, please include a link to your event posting in LionLink. Please note that posting your event does not substitute official approval or space booking in the University Event Management system. A video tutorial is available: https://youtu.be/UDYo8hcHWPU
Undergraduate Student Life Administration & Planning Updates
Thank you to Amy Fair and the Undergraduate Student Life Administration and Planning Office for providing the following information to ABC student groups.
1.] Approximately 17K worth of invoices from the previous fiscal year have been filed. This means that charges for which allocation may have been reclaimed have hit student group accounts. We will work during our Feb. 7th meeting to identify student groups with the largest incurred charges. Nevertheless, we hope that all student groups take this opportunity to reconcile their trial balance [video support is available in the next section] and email both their ABC representative, USL advisor, and [email protected] with any discrepancies.
2.] Please refer to the following spreadsheet for end of semester financial deadlines [e.g. April 22nd for domestic travel initiation].
3.] We have new verbiage related to FTF [financial transaction forms]. When communicating with [email protected] and your advisor, please try to remember that FTFs are now called Purchase Requests. An FTF Vendor is now a USL Preferred Vendor. A vendor who did not accept FTFs but was approved in PaymentWorks is a USL Frequently Used Vendors. If a Columbia student group has never worked with a vendor before, they must be set up in PaymentWorks. This onboarding process takes on average one month to complete; please reach out to [email protected] if you think you need to onboard a vendor.
4.] Shake Shack is now a USL Preferred Vendor, along with many other local businesses! :)
ABC Financial Management Video Playlist
We continue to expand our YouTube playlist to support Presidents and treasurers when managing their organizations finances. These include videos on:
Submitting an Internal Fund Transfer [2:12]- https://youtu.be/Cg0p1g-dNwU
Submitting a Financial Transaction Form [4:08]- https://youtu.be/loZDp1pOlj8
Reconciling a Trial Balance Report [14:06]- https://youtu.be/4UTucfoBxRg
Please try to complete two trial balance reconciliations before the end of this academic year for your student group, to ensure that all charges you have incurred have hit your balance before the next academic year. This will help maintain the financial health and sustainability of your organization.
ABC Treasury Update
We provided a status update regarding the ABC Treasury; ABC’s overall budget was $467,296.23 (+7.3% change from FY 22-23). We allocated ~370K at the beginning of the school year. We have received ~300K in cosponsorship requests and awarded ~84K to 71 different co sponsorship applications.
Revenue Generation Strategies
We reviewed strategies for revenue generation, including fundraising events (ticketing, bake sales/similar, etc.), alumni donations, and reaching out to like-minded institutions, departments, organizations. Information about co-sponsorships from other student councils or other governing board is available on this page: https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/studentlife/resources/funding/cosponsorships
Allocation Packet Deadline Release
We have announced a deadline for the allocation packet: April 24th, 2024. Submission instructions will be forthcoming.
Calendar Year Transitions
For student organizations with less than 50 members, we are recommending calendar year transitions. We provided one potential time-line at town hall; overall, the aim is to ensure that a new board entering their terms during the spring semester would have time to plan and execute one major event, with the ability to contact their predecessors for support, in addition to their ABC representative and USL advisor.
If your board transitions during the calendar year, please make sure to contact your USL advisor, change your grouper alias permissions for your @columbia.edu email address, and encourage all new student group leaders to sign up for the ABC newsletter.
Derecognition Update - Fall, 2023
We announced that the following groups were de-recognized: Columbia Association of Pre-Dental Students, Columbia Bioethics Society, Haitian Students Association, Helvidius (Journal of Politics and Society), Outdoors Club
Recognition Update - Fall, 2023
We announced ABC’s recognition of the following student groups: Columbia Medical Review, Music Industry Club, Run Columbia, Student Union for Sustainable Development, Double Exposure*
ABC Constitutional Revisions - Jan, 2024
We mentioned certain provisions within the recent ABC Constitutional Revisions, which passed with an 80% majority. The new Constitution is available at this address. As a reminder, the revisions are summarized as follows:
revised preamble
the board’s ability to define representative categories
the removal of council liaisons from the ABC board as voting members
clarifying that new group recognition occurs once per academic year, along with minor logistical changes to the new group recognition process
revised debt forgiveness policies
archival policy for ABC documents & procedures
Two constitutional bylaws
1.) whereby at least 20% of funds initially allocated to ABC must be reserved to fund co-sponsorships, accepted via a competitive application pool from all ABC student groups, with priority given to newly recognized groups.
2.) ABC must host town hall within the first month of a given semester, to provide at minimum a general presentation of ABC policy, introduce representatives, and survey groups.
a revised election timeline, whereby representative elections must start within two weeks of Spring Town Hall
a three-week transition period in March to facilitate better board handoff and allow the new ABC board to have at least one month of experience before the start of the next academic year
Spring 2024 Club ReFuel
We emphasized that student groups on probation, or those who have execute board transitions in the calendar year, must complete Spring Club Refuel: https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/ClubReFuel
The deadline to complete Club ReFuel for the Spring 2024 semester is Sunday, February 4th.
Spring NGR Timeline Release
We re-stated our timeline for the Spring New Group Recognition Cycle. Please keep an eye on this page for more details: https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/student-groups/recognition
New Group Recognition webform opens: Monday, February 26th
New Group Recognition webform closes: Sunday, March 17th
USL meets with SGB/ABC to review NGR submissions: Friday, March 22nd
NGR Governing Board review: Monday, March 25th - Sunday, April 21st
Governing Boards share NGR recommendations: Monday, April 22nd
USL reviews Governing Board recommendations: by Friday, April 26th
Final NGR decisions: Friday, May 3rd
Student groups recognized by ABC in Fall, 2023 will need to submit the USL NGR webform by March 17th, 2024. All other requirements will be waived for these groups.