Teamfunds

At WARG we safeguard teamfunds. Using teamfunds requires director approval. This is because teamfunds offer us maximum flexibility and never expire unlike our university of waterloo funding sources. They are our only lifeline in the case we have to restart the team hence we try to stockpile them with respect to time and exhaust all other funding sources before turning to them.

In general this boils down to always seeking to use other sources of funding for expenditures and only resorting to team funds if it’s our only option and the expense is a necessity. Some other SDC teams have negative team funds, this is a bad look we should avoid.

On the other hand we have received feedback from SDC administration that we shouldn’t stockpile teamfunds. Companies and the university sponsor us because they want us to use the money, not to have it sit there doing nothing (losing value with inflation over time). We have received less funding from other sources with the explicit reason that we have lots of team funds.

For these reasons, maintainning some but not a lot of money in teamfunds seems like an optimal path. Teamfunds should be spent in accordance with Internal Purchase Protocol and despite not being bound by normal requirements, should not be spent on Socials and other non-engineering/non-media related expenditures.