Budgeting and raising revenue

Running student media can sometimes be like running a small business. It can be a constant struggle to balance the books, chase up debting advertisers and find fresh accounts to raise the extra money.

Rather like managing your own money, keeping accounts can be difficult and many editors and station managers find it hard to keep track and raise money when all they really want to do is edit, write and produce.

As soon as possible appoint a student to act as business manager and a team of students to work on raising advertising and marketing. You may also find that your student union staff could help with raising invoices and processing your incoming and outgoing expenditure.

Most student media set up a special management committee to deal with finances, development and liaison with the student union.

This usually involves the station manager or editor, plus the sabbatical officer or student officer responsible for the union finances such as the Vice-President Finance, Union Treasurer or the Student Union President.

As a committee you can work out how much grant the student media should receive, how much other special grants you might need for equipment and set-up, and how much you will need to raise in revenue from advertising and sponsorship.

You should then draw up a budget, with estimates of income and expenditure. See below for an example of a budget with some of the budget headings you might need to incorporate into your own. For examples of student radio or TV station budget headings, which are slightly different but follow the same principles, please contact the NUS Press Office.

You should work to a budget for the year, and then also divide the budget into months, or into the number of editions you intend to produce, to give you an idea of how you can spend on each. At first you will not know how much advertising you can raise, so you will have to create a target, through subtracting the grant, or fixed income, from the estimated expenditure.

Remember you will have to keep working on the budget, keeping close track, month by month, or edition by edition of how much you can spend and how much you need to raise through more advertising or sponsorship.

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