By Iraz Akkus and William Goltz
This is the fourth article in the “Uncovering the Union” series, a series dedicated to providing greater insight into the inner workings of LSE’s Students’ Union.
LSE’s sporting clubs are essential to the School’s cultural and social life, and supporting their development is a key part of the LSESU’s administrative role. While the LSE Athletics Union (AU) is in charge of organising events across the university’s sporting community, the LSESU retains control over the funding that is allocated to individual clubs and societies.
Through a series of interviews with key LSESU figures and executive committees of LSE sports clubs, The Beaver has examined the complex relationship between LSE’s sporting community and the resources on which it relies for support.
At the beginning of every academic year, a new cohort of sporting committees begins the process of applying for AU funding. As they are often unfamiliar with the financial demands of their respective clubs, the LSESU provides formal compulsory online training sessions for the new committees before the start of Autumn Term, taking them through the application process and providing guidance on how to remain financially stable. There are also in-person training sessions during term time, however attendance for these is usually lower.
Clubs can also reach out to the LSESU Funds Coordinator, Pauline El-Khoury, for further help and guidance during the course of the year, especially if there is an issue with stretching the budget for further projects or to cover potential unseen costs. However, some club members argued that “[the LSESU] could be more specific in their guidance for applications which might let us receive more.”
James* states that one error of financial competency in clubs can be seen within the transfer of committee members, claiming that “since there is no guaranteed continuity of what the role actually entails from one cohort of committee members to the next, often the same financial mistakes are made. If there is little or no communication between previous members and their successors, new committee members trek down the same avenue of applying for wrong sponsorships or pleading their case incorrectly, meaning each year valuable lessons may be lost and those that pick up the role are back to square one every September.”
James’* account is emblematic of sports clubs wanting to maximise their funding in order to facilitate their respective activities. So how does the LSESU actually assess and evaluate how much funding to allocate to each club?
Every September, sporting clubs submit an application for a specific sum to the Students’ Union Fund – the ‘pot of money’ that the LSESU receives from the LSE every year. Part of the application consists of budget records from the previous year to illustrate the club’s expenditure for things like renting pitches and purchasing kit. It also requires the new committee members to create a financial budget and a development plan for the upcoming year.
The highest grant every club can apply for is £5000. Moreover, this year’s Activities and Communities Officer, Chris Adewoye, explained that clubs can apply for a further £5000 during the course of the year for special events. Examples of this include new equipment, kit and domestic and international tours that major clubs like LSE Men and Women’s Football and Netball are known for.
After their application, a panel including the Activities and Communities Officer, the Societies Manager, Sports Manager and other key members of the LSESU, use records and data from previous years, as well as the proposal submitted by the new committee, to assess how much of the £5000 margin the club is applicable for. After the panel’s decisions are issued, clubs can appeal if they feel unfairly evaluated.
However, the feedback and appeals process has proven to be a source of frustration for many executive committees, remaining an area that the SU would do well to develop. Multiple sports committee members stressed the lack of detailed and standardised criteria upon which their application was evaluated. Georgia* has expressed her frustration with the feedback process, stating that “[the LSESU] wasn’t clear with the criteria of how funding was judged.” Due to the absence of standardised benchmarks, clubs therefore find it hard to utilise a pivot point within the appeals process.
In a survey conducted by The Beaver, a third of all the sporting clubs at LSE responded with insights into their funding. 75% stated that they rely heavily on membership fees to sustain their sports needs throughout the year, while trying to stretch the budget for fun socials and events. These socials are crucial in creating a good reputation within the LSE community, and help with ensuring a sustained level of membership throughout the year and keeping the society afloat.
Sydney* referred to a “small/medium size society paradox,” claiming that “when we do not have enough funds because of low membership it is hard to plan socials, with irregular socials attracting members becomes difficult, which in turn means our membership remains stagnant and thus a weak basis to apply for more funding.”
When faced with challenges like funding, LSESU offers an additional Participation Fund, which provides individual members with extra financial support for any extracurricular activities. This grant is up to £500 a year and is intended to help students curb transport, training and even tour costs. While this information is available on the website, many of those eligible for this funding may not be aware of its existence as it is not frequently publicised.
Whether this is a communication failure of the SU or an issue of discontinuity of information passed from one committee to the next, there is a clear structural mismatch of how the information is relayed to club members.
As has been reiterated across The Beaver’s “Uncovering the Union” series, progress and development within the LSESU is undermined by the bureaucratic obstacles and made difficult by the lack of sabbatical tenure continuity. These same issues seem to affect club committee transfers from year to year, despite the LSESU efforts to support continuity.
However, the issues with AU funding cannot be solely attributed to the lack of transparency. Chris Adewoye states that the LSESU’s activities funding from LSE has been declining year on year, which has been forcing the committee in charge of allocating funds to make harder and stricter decisions. The Students’ Union Fund has shrunk from “£300,000 to £150,000 within the last three years,” while the number of clubs and societies remains at an all time high of more than 300.
Operating at half the financial support from the years prior, the LSESU and AU clubs ought to work together to not only be more communicative and transparent, but also address the wider issue of the university’s spiralling support. As Chris said, “If the SU can demonstrate that clubs are efficiently using the entirety of the allocated funds, and this is still not enough to deliver the student activity required, then our case to LSE for a larger sum of activities funding will be greatly strengthened.”
Although the LSESU works to address the issues surrounding funding application, there is still a long way to go before the funding process benefits all clubs. Moving forward there has been action taken on providing more regular training to help clubs become more autonomous with their financial management. Furthermore, LSESU has added additional guidance to their website to make the process clearer.
Ultimately, sports clubs ought to continue being vocal to the LSESU about the financial difficulties they face, and consider creating an official passover phase to strategically accumulate lessons learnt from the preceding years. This way, if clubs remain underfunded, the LSESU can use this documentation to lobby for an increased Students’ Union Fund yearly capital.
*Names have been changed to preserve anonymity
Illustration by Francesca Corno
