Managing Group Accounts
Types of Accounts

Main accounts are made up of funds that are raised by the individual student groups through fund raising events, dues collection, departmental gifts, grants (both internal and external to MIT), etc. These accounts are essentially internal checking accounts for MIT student organizations. These funds can be accessed at any time and are carried over from year to year. These accounts are private, and are only accessible by students with Financial Signature authority for your group.

Funding accounts consist of UA Finboard allocations or GSC Funding Board allocations for a given semester. These funds are awarded per semester and do not rollover into the next term. As with main accounts, funding accounts are only accessible to students with financial signature authority for the group.

Reserve Accounts - The ASA and Dean Benedict agreed to the following policy on reserve account interest payments based on the input the ASA received from groups with reserve accounts. We expect this policy to be in place from 7/1/06 for the next two fiscal years, during which time we will re-evaluate the policy with the goal of ensuring a long-term method for groups to earn interest on their reserve accounts.

Groups will receive interest on funds in their reserve account:
- 3% on the first $5000
- 2% on the next $52500
This limits the interest that any group receives to $1200 per year.

Endowment Accounts - Some student organizations have very large sums of money that they were given as gifts or were specifically raised for endowment purposes. Endowment accounts have a certain amount of principle to which interest is applied annually. Groups may only use the interest and do not touch the principle. Most endowment accounts have at least $25,000 in principle.

Definition of Institute Funds: It should be noted that all student organization funds are considered Institute funds, authorized for particular student activities, and cannot be deposited in non-MIT accounts. This includes those funds granted for use by the Institute to student governments/organizations on an annual basis, funds that have been raised by the respective student organizations as a result of individual fundraising efforts, fees that may have been charged for membership, revenue received from running organized events and through any other means. As such, all funds are guaranteed by MIT.