Design Team Finances and Funding

Here's a quick guide on where to find info on how a design team can work with its finances and get funding!

Finances

EUS Finances

Everything and anything you need to know can be found in the EUS Financial Guidebook! If you’re a financial officer for your team (each team must at least have 1) you should be familiar with this document.

FOAPAL

FOAPAL (fund, org, account, program, activity, location) is an accounting system used throughout McGill University, identifying the various parties by said criteria. FOAPAL aids in easy transactions by identified parties; it is limited to organizations directly associated with McGill, e.g. faculties, professors, departments, services, and some design teams. FOAPALs are mostly useful for paying brokerage fees, McGill Market Place orders, McGill based work orders etc.. For more specific questions about these, contact the Financial Services Team (FST) of your department.

The EUS has a FOAPAL however it cannot send of receive payments via this FOAPAL. Some design teams have, or are looking to have, their own FOAPAL account through their department to facilitate payments. Here are some notes about FOAPAL, but again, check with FST if you have specific questions:

1. To open an account, $10k is required as an initial amount
2. For the fund to be kept open, minimum balance of $250 is required
3. In order to open/re-activate an account, money must come from another internal McGill account
4. McGill could not, in our case, invoice the EUS for the funds as the Team’s account had yet to be opened. Money could not be invoiced to an active “transfer” account within the McGill system because of accounting rules.
5. Any account needs an account manager. In our case, this is a professor, our advisor.
6. Machining doesn’t seem to be charged to design teams, as we have not seen a single “machining” charge on our account printouts
7. You can transfer money from your EUS account to FOAPAL accounts by contacting your FST to invoice your EUS account for the needed amount
8. You can transfer money from your FOAPAL to your EUS account by contacting your FST to write a cheque to the order of “Engineering Undergraduate Society of McGill University ℅ TEAM NAME” and send it to the EUS

Funding

For a general overview of funding for McGill groups, check out the Funding Sources page. A lot of the info is the same, but here it's more pointed to design teams.

EUS Funding

Design Team Fund

This fund is available twice a year and is exclusive to EUS Design Teams. Read through the design team fund wiki page in detail, it'll give you tips on how to properly prepare your application and walk you through how the funding is distributed.

Student Space Fund

You can apply for this fund for any improvements you'd like to make to your workspace. The short term fund is available twice a year (you'll get an email), while the long term fund, used for any large renovation, is available year round. For information on the application process, check out the student space fund wiki page.

SSMU Funds

A lot of funds are available to student groups under SSMU. Those most applicable to design teams include the ambassador and the campus life fund. The ambassador fund can be used to cover a large portion of any competition fee, while campus life will typically support workshops and tutorials you may host. Again for more info check out the wiki page or their website.

MESC and Faculty Funding

MESC Funding

Design Teams are eligible for both the "Design Competitions" and "Project Development" funding options. Details on how to apply can be found in the MESC section of the Funding Sources page. Do note that MESC prefers for you to apply in the first semester and that funding may take up to 6-8 weeks to reach the EUS account.

Seeds of Change

Again, all the info for this can be found under the MESC section in Funding Sources. Make sure to apply through MESC's "Seeds of Change" funding application (option F) after your campaign is completed to receive your funds, this can be a bit of a slow process (a couple months).