Easter Holidays Treasurer Meeting Minutes

Reviewing remaining budget, sponsor tiers, and outreach plans ahead of Term 3.

Minutes by Odin

"Remember if you owe the bank a million dollars, that's your problem; if you owe the bank a billion dollars, that's their problem." - Tom F (2026)

Attendance

• [Secretary] Odin
• [President] Tom F
• [Treasurer] Bharat
• [Tech/Gaming] Raven
• [Academic] Joseph (muted)
• [Ex-Treasurer/Publicity] Jakub Publicitski (joined halfway)

Agenda 1: State of Budget

• Tom F: Link to budget document shared with Bharat.
  • Last updated in February: "whoops" - Tom F
  • Bharat is looking over it; MRFs from March still need to go through.
• Bharat: Looked at Ball budget: £███ left; photographer: £███; £██ for ball prizes.
  • Tom F: Ball went ever so slightly over budget.
• Raven: Term 3 LAN may be a slight squeeze on gaming budget, heads up!
  • £███ left for food, still awaiting £███.
  • Raven: Tech has got some "admittedly half-formed plans."
    • Tom F: Does VPS cost money? MRF not in yet.
    • Raven: Yeah, Vlad set it up, paid for as it went through Hetzner; chase Vlad up.
• Bharat to ping all exec asking what their plans for utilising budget in T3 are.
  • Then split that into small (doable for now) and large (wait until next year until new sponsors/academic budget).
• Tom F: Would suggest checking expenditure to see how much we have left over; not 100% accurate. If push comes to shove, re-allocate a bit here and there, but be careful (not too drastic).
  • Raven: Some roles (e.g. sports) may not need their entire budget; bit rude to strong-arm them out of their budget without them present in the meeting.
  • Tom F: "█ █████ ████ ██ █████ █ ████ ████ ███ ██ █ ██████ ███████ ████ ████ ██ ███████████ ████ ██ ██."
  • Raven: "More motivation [in the society] this year"; would like sponsors to come back to WASD. In the process of that, we can pull in more sponsor seekers for both WASD and UWCS.
  • Tom F: "UWCS Gaming - Where money goes to die."
• Raven/Tom F: Suggested creating an optional formality where newer exec send a #motherboard-announcements draft to presidents for proofreading if they feel nervous.

Agenda 2: Sponsor Offerings

Potentially Revise Sponsor Tiers

• Bharat: Current tier numbers are weird. You would expect fewer people signing up for Silver than Gold, Bronze than Silver, etc.
  • Our structure is currently the other way up.
  • Raven: ████ ████ █████ ███ ████ ███████████.
  • Tom F: ███ ████ ███████ ████ ██ ███ ██████████.
  • Bharat: Shift tiers around or add an extra tier (Raven's idea: Platinum tier).
  • Tom F: Take inspiration from CodeSoc title sponsorship? Add something similar to that.
  • Raven: Would people in the society have the appetite for that?
  • Tom F: Don't think enough people give a Sh!t; point to our large pile of pizza and "██████ ███".
  • Tom F (final word): Be careful when changing price and offer for sponsor tiers.

Area-Specific Sponsors

• Tom F: "Jolly good idea!"
• Bharat: Wildcards should be really opportunistic.
• Bharat: BCS grant for "grassroots movements"; need to check whether Wildcards is classed as grassroots.
  • Raven: Re: safe spaces and sponsors, be increasingly mindful of the ability for the space to be truly safe when sponsored. As long as it's a sensible company, probably fine, i.e. taking ████ money even though ███████ ████ ██████ ██ ██████ ██████ ██████ ████ via us/█████████.
• Bharat: Was there a problem with Wildcards exercising their budget if it doesn't help the society entirely?
  • Raven: You cannot specifically exclude/include people; you can get reimbursed if you advertise correctly, i.e. "aimed at women and non-binary people".
  • Tom F: ████ █: ████ █████
• Raven: If SU has a problem [with sponsorship contract], it is their responsibility to flag it up; if you get past SU, you're all good.
• Raven: Gaming/LAN-specific sponsors and WASD-specific sponsors.
  • Tom F: Would the money you get from the sponsor go towards logistics or a donation?
  • Raven: To my understanding: logistics.
• Bharat: Term 3 charity symposium: company lined up to donate for logistics and donate leftover to charity.
  • Said company is Histofy, put into contact by tissue image and analytics lab; Jakub Publicitski helped write the contract.
  • Bharat: If they █████ █████ ██, we ████ our ███ ████████ drones to █████ ████ in ███ ███████ ████!
• Tom F: Having a tech sponsor for not only money but hardware.
• Tom F: If you want to do department-specific sponsorship (e.g tech, gaming, wildcards etc), make mini sponsor packs.
  • Keep it quite light in the main sponsor pack and then add this extra sheet if the company is interested.

Agenda 3: Sponsor Outreach

Agenda 2 slightly crossed over into Agenda 3 early when talking about title sponsorships.

• Raven: ████████ ██████████ ██ ██████ █████████ ███████.
  • ██████: ████████ █████ ████████ ██ ███ ██████████ ████████ ████ ██████ ██ ███ █.
  • ███ █ ████████ ████████
    • ███ ███████ ████ ██████████ ███ ██ ████████
    • ███ █ ████ ████ ██████ ████ ███ ██ ███ ████████ ████████ ██ ██████.
    • ██████ ███████ ███ █ █████ ███ ██████████ ██ ████████ ██ █████ █ █████████.
    • ███ █: ██ ███ ██████ ████ █████ █████ ███ █████ █████ ██ ████, ███ "██ █████ ███ ███ ███████ ███████ ███"; "█████ ██ ████ ███████, █████ ███ ██ █████".
• Tom F: "Any company that would make us look bad, don't do it."
• Tom F: "WHACK was approached by ██████ for a potential sponsorship."
• Raven: Also add ████ to the ban list; ███ is a ██████. They used to be a sponsor; UWCS just didn't renew sponsorship, company was more harm than good.
• Raven: Do we have a master list of all previous sponsors?
  • List on handover pack and list on outline (can't be accessed right now, #tech-zone poked).
  • Raven: Does it have old WASD sponsors? Check for Monster?
  • Raven: Got very close to making Red Bull sponsorship happen; ███ ███████.
  • Bharat: Start a bidding war by putting both of them in email chain.
  • Raven: Red Bull is ████ █████ about █████ sponsorships; Monster has done it before, likely to do it again (WASD 2019).
• Tom F: Get sponsor pack ready for T3W1 at the latest.
  • Previous sponsor packs on Figma for reference.

Strategy

• Tom F: ███████████.
• Tom F: ███████████.
  • ███████████.
  • ███████████.
• Raven: ███████████.
  • ███████████.
  • Tom F: ███████████.
    • Tom F: ███████████.
• Tom F: ███████████.
  • Raven: ███████████.
• QRT
  • ███████████.
    • Tom F (to Bharat): ███████████.
    • Bharat: ███████████.
  • ███████████.
  • Raven: ███████████.
    • Jakub Publicitski: ███████████.
  • Jakub Publicitski: ███████████.
• Raven: ███████████.
  • Tom F: ███████████.
• Tom F: ███████████.
• Companies that have done past events
  • Tom F: ███████████.
  • Tom F: ███████████.
    • Bharat: ███████████.
• ███████████.
• Tom F: ███████████.
• Tom F: ███████████.
  • Raven: ███████████.
  • Bharat: ███████████.
• Jakub Publicitski: ███████████.
  • Raven: ███████████.
  • Tom F: ███████████.
  • Tom F: ███████████.
  • ███████████.

Closing Words

• Jakub Publicitski (to Bharat): Degree comes first, don't fuck up your exams.
• Bharat: Not a query; going to look into exploiting affiliation with BCS. Student chapter says we can get money for events.
  • Contacted by another university's computing society; turns out they are running an event with BCS money.
  • Raven: BCS are sitting there asking for us to wait.
  • Bharat: BCS promoting: industry professional speakers, event funding and merchandise, and exclusive BCS student chapter hackathon. Will look through how to access benefits.
  • Tom F: Plan A: email outta nowhere. Plan B: use DCS' contact details from their affiliation.
• Raven makes a final plea for the gaming racing sim rig
  • (Extra £3794.34 to be allocated to the gaming budget, Bharat declines).
• Bharat: Compares the budget to golf; wants to run it as low to the ground as possible without going under.

TODO

• Bharat: Ping all exec asking what their plans for utilising budget in T3 are.
• Bharat: Split proposed T3 spend into small items (doable now) and large items (likely to wait until next year / new funding).
• Raven: Chase Vlad up for Hetzner VPS MRF.
• Bharat: Check whether UWCS / Wildcards would qualify for the BCS "grassroots movements" grant.
• Check the master list of previous sponsors, including old WASD sponsors such as Monster.
• Get sponsor pack ready by T3W1 at the latest.
• ███████████.
• ███████████.
• ███████████.
• ███████████.
• ███████████.
• ███████████.
• Bharat: Look into BCS student chapter benefits and funding routes for events.
• Put down deposit on █████ ██████████ building.