By the Numbers: How does the college support the CoJMC Checkout Room?

The CoJMC Checkout Room is a vital resource hub offering free access to a diverse range of equipment for students, faculty, and staff engaged in media-related projects. This resource is primarily funded through the student technology fee, supplemented by fines and fees. However, with anticipated changes in course offerings and potential declines in student credit hour production, there's a need to explore alternative funding sources to sustain the inventory levels of the Checkout Room.

Where does the funding come from?

The primary source of funding for the Checkout Room is the student technology fee, which is levied at a rate of $11 per credit hour for enrolled students, capped at $165 per semester. These fees are collected by UNL Student Accounts and subsequently allocated to academic colleges based on their respective student credit hour generation.

In addition to the student technology fee, the Checkout Room also generates revenue through fees charged for late equipment returns and repair or replacement costs for damaged items. In Fiscal Year 2023, student technology fees constituted the majority of the Checkout Room's resources, accounting for 91.5% of total funding, while fines and fees from other sources contributed the remaining 8.5%.

The college has initiated plans to gradually phase out JGEN courses over the upcoming two-year period. In Fiscal Year 2023, these courses represented 15% of the total student credit hour production within the college. As we proceed with the phase-out, it's inevitable that we'll witness a decline in our overall student credit hour production.

Our allocation of student technology fees is closely tied to the proportion of SCH production on our campus. Anticipating the ramifications of this decline in technology fee revenue is complex, primarily due to uncertainties stemming from recent budget cuts impacting SCH production across various units. While it's foreseeable that our SCH production may diminish over the next couple of years, the uncertainty lies in whether other colleges will encounter similar declines. Consequently, it's unclear whether our share of overall SCH production will remain stable or decrease.

In the event of a decrease in campus-wide student credit hour production or our proportion thereof, we can expect a corresponding decline in the student technology fees allocated to our college. To sustain the current inventory levels of the checkout room, identifying alternative funding sources becomes imperative.

How do we spend our resources?

The bulk of our expenditure is dedicated to maintaining an extensive inventory of DSLR cameras, mirrorless cameras, and video cameras, ensuring a comprehensive array of equipment for our users. In Fiscal Year 2023, a substantial 66.5% of our total expenses were allocated towards procuring and maintaining these essential imaging tools, along with their associated accessories such as bags and batteries.

In addition to these primary expenses, we also allocate resources toward other significant categories. This includes expenditure on lenses and lens caps, accounting for 6.1% of our expenses, as well as investments in computers, iPads, and their accompanying accessories, which collectively represent 5.5% of our expenditure. Additionally, a portion of our funds are directed towards equipment repairs (4.2%) and the procurement of tripods, mounts, and related accessories (3.2%), ensuring the reliability and longevity of our equipment.

Approximately 1% of our revenue is dedicated to covering overhead fees. These include the NCard transaction fee, which facilitates convenient payment options for our users, and the University's administrative fee, which supports the broader operations of the Business and Finance division, thereby enabling the smooth functioning of our Checkout Room.

You might be curious about the apparent discrepancy between our expenses and available revenue in Fiscal Year 2023. This discrepancy is largely attributed to timing factors inherent in our financial operations. Specifically, a significant portion of our equipment acquisitions occur during the summer months.

As of June 30, 2022, the conclusion of fiscal year 2022, the Checkout Room had a surplus of $63,147 remaining unutilized. This surplus was carried forward into fiscal year 2023, starting on July 1, 2022, thus bolstering our available funds for the subsequent fiscal period. Consequently, these carry-forward funds played a crucial role in supporting the expenses incurred during fiscal year 2023, thereby accounting for the apparent disparity between our expenditures and revenue for that period.