This page will give you a picture of how Our Finances work, including income, expenditure and the way that an unincorporated charity functions financially. Transparency is hugely important to us as an organisation, so we wanted this information to be readily accessible for all student members.
About Us
Before we get into the breakdown of our finances, let’s start with a little info about us. Falmouth and Exeter Students’ Union (The SU) is a membership-led charity; run by students, for students. We provide representation and deliver quality services to meet the needs and interests of an ever-changing and diverse student population.
We are a not-for-profit incorporated charity, and have been registered with the Charity Commission since 2012. This means that money is never taken out of the SU in the way that can happen with non-charities. Any money that comes in is always reinvested to ensure it is spent on students, for students.
Read more About Us.
About Our Finances
Running costs for The SU total around £953,866 per year. In 2022/23, we received income of around £967,254 meaning we carried forward a small surplus. Surplus income can be spent in the current or future year, or could become a part of our charity reserves to help ensure that we are financially sustainable going forward.
Expenditure includes student-facing services such as Advice, Student Engagement and Student Activites, covering the back office support for these operations along with general running costs of the Students' Union.
A simple breakdown of this can be seen in the chart below.
Our income from the academic year 2022/23 can be broken down as follows:
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The Block Grants from Falmouth University and the University of Exeter are the SU’s main funding source which are agreed annually as part of the SU Strategic Business Planning Process. As part of this process, the grant to the SU is agreed in its totality and each University subsequently pays their share based on an apportionment determined by student numbers on the Cornwall Campuses at that point in time.
So, in simpler terms, Falmouth University have contributed more to our block grant as they have more students currently studying at the Cornwall campuses!
About Our Budgets:
When it comes to setting our budget, we use a number of different mechanisms to ensure we can effectively deliver everything we want to for our student members in the next academic year. This includes forecasting spending across our teams, looking at previous years’ spending, and understanding and strategising the key campaigns we will be undertaking in the coming year.
Budgeting work is completed by the Senior Leadership Team, then approved by Trustees, in line with strategic and operational priorities. This sets out how we will allocate our limited financial resources to deliver everything we want to do. We manage our finances in a way which helps us to drive forward our organisational priorities, optimise our student-facing outputs and ensure we are delivering the best possible service to you, our student members, that we can afford.