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Charities Drive

The Student Council has a new Charities Drive plan. The Council has incorporated some very good aims in it, but whether or not the drive will get them the money they want is anybody's guess.

Holding two drives instead of one and a new allocation system are the major changes. This will present two catch-all drives, instead of the present system of one big drive in the fall and sporadic individual charities later in the year. The new arrangement will suffer from the lack of incentive in a second Council drive compared to the special appeal that was successful for the World Student Service Fund and the displaced persons. But it is hoped that allowing the student to divide his contribution during the year will increase the total amount.

The new make-up of the contribution card will have two effects: it will give added emphasis to student charities and will reveal the proportion the Council spends on purely administrative expenses.

Emphasizing student charities is a good idea. Each such charity will be listed as a separate item instead of receiving its funds from the Council's budget. PBH will also be listed separately instead of receiving its usual fixed percentage of the total. In case any of these do unexpectedly poorly, the Council plans to use the usually large unallocated funds as a leveling influence. The well-publicized national charities will appear as a single item at the bottom of the card. Students can fill in the particular charity they want to give to.

The Council's request for 20 percent of each contribution is for administrative expenses and non-charity committee work. It will be made clear that the student does not have to give this if he doesn't want to. The figure is reduced from this year's 30 percent, which included several charities.

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The 20 percent figure is based on the expectation that next year's Council will spend $5000, as did this year's. There is considerable room for a reduction of this figure. The largest expenditure this year was $1550 for the NSA, most of which went for representatives' expenses to various conventions. The rest of the budget consists of many small items. The total of these is greatly increased by the lack of any coordination in spending. The Council approves an expenditure, and a committee chairman takes care of it in his own way. For example, the Council's printing this year was handled by numerous companies throughout New England. A large contract with one printer would undoubtedly be cheaper. This coordination calls for either an expansion of the treasurer's duties to something besides signing checks or hiring a student business manager.

This organization of the drive involves some very interesting experiments. The second drive in the spring provides a safety valve in case the first one does not work well. This system should be regarded as an experiment and reviewed by next year's Council in that light.

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