After suffering a large deficit in 2015-16, the Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) managed to move its budget into the green and reported a surplus of $41,000 in 2016-17.
The surplus has allowed RRRA to stabilize its budget and increase services and programming for the 2017-18 year, according to both RRRA president Hyder Naqvi and vice-president (administration) Jacob Howell.
According to Howell, the 2016-17 year was spent cutting costs to pay back the deficit and “recuperate” the money that was owed. The audited budget for the 2015-16 year shows $1,225,685 in total expenses, with only $1,042,714 in total revenue.
Howell said that RRRA was able to pay back the deficit through cutting programming, and raising the costs for some of their services last year, including prices at Abstentions—the association’s student-run convenience store in Residence Commons.
For Naqvi—who started out his presidency in 2016 with a deficit of nearly $183,000—moving the budget to a surplus was a matter of learning from the past and adjusting to the present.
“The challenge was to monitor our cash flow and to honour the commitments made in the previous year. The executive team analyzed RRRA expenses to see where we can make cuts, and found the most effective use of our resources,” Naqvi said in an email.
Naqvi said RRRA didn’t lower its standards through budget cuts to programming and services when coming out of the deficit.
“Things were tight, but we learned quickly how to adjust,” he said. “We didn’t want to lower our goals and RRRA’s output for residence students due to the deficit.”
Naqvi said his team was able to produce a budget surplus within just one year by increasing profits at Abstentions by about $30,000. He said this was done through cutting expenses and negotiating better terms from suppliers.
“Abstentions typically produces a profit of about $40,000, but we were able to increase that to over $70,000,” Naqvi said.
According to both Naqvi and Howell, the surplus allowed RRRA to allocate more money to services, programming, and events for residence students in the 2017-18 year.
“As a non-for-profit, we don’t try to generate profit, we try to spend all that money onto residence students and we aim for zero money back,” Naqvi said.
Howell also said that RRRA was able to lower prices at Abstentions again once the deficit was paid back. He said he wants to keep the store affordable for students, while still earning a profit.
“We’re the owner of this business or service. This year personally, with the time I’ve invested in Abstentions . . . I’ve been trying to make it more like a service,” he said.
Howell said he reviewed store processes, products and supplier costs, and deals while the store was closed during summer 2017.
“As proactive measures toward our budget this year, we had a greater focus on Abstentions . . . As an executive team, we decided the areas we wanted to improve on such as reducing overhead costs and working with suppliers to get cheaper prices,” Howell explained.
RRRA spent over $765,000 on Abstentions’ expenses in 2015-16, but budgeted only around $652,000 for 2017-18.
Naqvi also agreed that the measures taken in the summer helped to increase productivity at the convenience store. He said they increased the amounts of products the store could hold and upgraded their accounting systems to track sales online.
Naqvi said the surplus will also improve planning for future years, as they know the store is capable of earning more revenue.
“[The surplus] means we can provide a little more money for programming, expecting to have a higher revenue or profit from Abstentions,” he said.
Howell said it looks like RRRA is on track to meet their budget goals for the 2017-18 year.
“We’re pretty stable for sure,” he said.
Photo by Erica Giancola
