Treasurer
Treasurer
As Treasurer, you are the financial steward of the group's resources.
Role Description
As Treasurer, you’re the financial steward who keeps the group strong, sustainable, and ready for growth. Your leadership ensures every dollar is used effectively and transparently, building long-term trust with alumni and empowering the board to plan impactful programs.
- Collaborate with event leads to build realistic budgets and track spending
- Provide clear monthly or quarterly financial updates to the board
- Manage reimbursements, dues, and donations with accuracy and responsiveness
- Maintain organized records and follow university/non-profit guidelines
- Support long-term planning by identifying financial trends and opportunities
- The board always has accurate financial information for decision-making
- Volunteers feel supported through timely reimbursements
- Financial trends are tracked early, helping the group stay proactive
- Records are so clear that future Treasurers can step in seamlessly
- The group is financially prepared for new initiatives, scholarships, and events
- People who enjoy organization, accuracy, and detail
- Clear communicators who can simplify financial info for others
- Individuals who value transparency and ethical leadership
- Those willing to use or learn basic tools like Excel or Google Sheets
This role generally requires 4–6 hours per month, including board meetings, processing transactions, reconciling accounts, and preparing reports. Expect a slight increase during annual dues collection or major events.
- A meaningful leadership role with real, visible impact
- Strengthens your resume with nonprofit financial experience
- A strategic seat at the table, working closely with the executive board
- Flexible work that happens mostly behind the scenes and on your schedule
- The satisfaction of turning budgets into scholarships, events, and community-building
Treasurer Toolkit
Manage and Preserve Financial Stewardship
As the Treasurer, you are the financial steward who keeps the group strong, sustainable, and ready for growth. Your leadership ensures every dollar is used effectively and transparently, building long-term trust with alumni and empowering the board to plan impactful programs.
Ensure today’s actions make long-term financial health a reality. Look beyond the next event to identify financial trends and opportunities that support the future of your group.
Do not worry about just watching numbers flow in and out. Excel in your role by identifying early financial trends, helping the group stay proactive rather than reactive.
Maintain highly organized and clear records using basic tools like Excel or Google Sheets. Clear financial data allows the entire board to make informed, data-driven decisions without ambiguity.
When presenting financial trends or variation in budgets, simplify the financial information so other board members easily understand the strategic rationale behind the numbers.
View the Annual Budget Planner and Tracker.
Maintain Fiscal Excellence and Compliance
A well-maintained financial filing system ensures that the group's financial history is structured, searchable, and legally compliant.
Set up your digital repository with dedicated folders for Financial History, Bank Statements, Reimbursement Receipts, and Tax/Non-Profit Guidelines.
Save finalized fiscal year-end reports and approved annual budgets as static files (like PDFs) to preserve historical data and prevent accidental alterations.
Keep working budget sheets accessible to active board members for collaboration, but ensure final financial ledgers are set to view only to maintain security.
Regularly audit access permissions to bank accounts and financial folders and archive older operational files at the close of every fiscal year.
Construct Data-Driven Financial Reports
Board meetings must be a place for strategic decision making not just passive updates. Your financial reporting should reflect this by emphasizing clarity, direction, and transparency.
Provide clear monthly or quarterly financial updates to the board. While the President dictates the overarching priorities of the group, the Treasurer refines those priorities into realistic budgets and financial roadmaps.
If an event or initiative is proposed during a meeting without a clear budget or funding source, the Treasurer must act as the ultimate safeguard. Speak up to clarify funding metrics before the board moves to the next agenda item.
Turn your budgets into meaningful impact, like scholarships, community building, and events that align with the association's mission pillars.
View the Event Budget Proposal Worksheet.
Compliance and Cross Board Collaboration
While you manage the financial ledger, you also act as the strategic "financial co-pilot" and operational "glue" that connects multiple board committees to keep operations transparent, organized, and accountable. Below is more information on your collaboration with fellow board members.
- While the President is the final owner of the agenda and dictates the strategic direction, the Treasurer refines those raw priorities into realistic budgets, ensuring every expenditure is explicitly tied back to a specific group goal, an OSUAA mission pillar, or an engagement tier requirement
- If a project or event is proposed during a meeting without a clear budget ceiling or designated funding source, the Treasurer acts as the ultimate organizational safeguard. Speak up to clarify the missing financial metrics before the President moves the board to the next agenda item.
- Collaborate directly with the Secretary and the Event Chair immediately following group activities.
- Ensure all spending is tracked, financial records match, and required Post-Event DocuSign forms are completed, submitted, and archived as PDFs.
- Partner with Event Chairs before public promotion to build realistic event budgets and track spending.
- Manage vendor payments and volunteer reimbursements with high accuracy and responsiveness so volunteers feel supported.
- Work closely with the Membership Chair to spot early patterns in annual dues collection or event costs.
- Coordinate to translate raw financial numbers into a "Win of the Month" for the Secretary's minutes, securing a permanent historical record of positive growth and collective board morale.
- View the Event Budget Proposal Worksheet.
Tax Exempt Status Requirements
Maintaining your tax-exempt status protects group funds from federal taxation (up to $50,000 gross receipts) and ensures operations remain fully compliant with the IRS and university guidelines. The Treasurer holds primary operational responsibility for executing these filings accurately and on time.
OSUAA alumni groups operate as tax-exempt 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations. This status ensures the group does not pay Federal income tax on its revenue. Note: General dues or direct donations to a 501(c)(4) group are typically not individually tax-deductible for donors unless they are processed directly through an official university endowment or current-use scholarship fund.
Every year, the Treasurer (or President) must file an electronic Form 990-N (e-Postcard) with the IRS annually.
- Deadline
- This must be filed within 5 months of the close of your group’s fiscal tax year.
- Your tax year can be found in your group’s IRS account.
- The Critical Three Year Rule
- Failing to file this required form for three consecutive years results in an automatic revocation of your group’s tax-exempt status
- After revocation, there are steep IRS reinstatement fees and financial penalties
- Due to this, maintaining your status and filing your 990-N annually is very important for the health and future of your group
- Accounts must be set up under Business Banking, never as a personal checking account. This keeps the funds legally detached from individual board members and guarantees clean transitions
- The bank account name must exactly match the official group name listed on your constitution
- Use the group's unique Employer Identification Number (EIN) for the account and ensure your current EIN is on file with your OSUAA contact
To maximize student impact, any idle funds in excess of $10,000 that are not actively earmarked for an immediate, upcoming event budget should be sent to your group’s official OSUAA current-use or endowment account to directly fund student scholarships.
At any group event where physical cash or checks are collected, at least two board members must count and record the money together prior to leaving the facility, signing off on a cash management slip.
View the Cash and Check Management Slip.
View the Annual Tax Filing Verification Memo.
How to Support Strategic Planning
As the Treasurer, you hold a strategic seat at the table. While other board members focus on the immediate logistics of execution, your responsibility is to look at the horizon. Strategic planning means looking 3 to 5 years into the future, deciding what kind of legacy and impact your alumni group wants to achieve, and working backward to build the financial framework that makes that vision possible.
- Look beyond the current fiscal year
- Do not just budget for the next 12 months.
- When the board discusses multi-year goals, such as establishing a new endowed scholarship or expanding a flagship annual event, map out a 3-year financial runway to see how today’s cash flows impact tomorrow's capabilities.
- Identify trends early
- Excel in your role by analyzing year-over-year data.
- If registration revenue for a specific event has dropped by 10% annually while venue costs have risen, flag this trend for the executive board early so they can pivot proactively rather than reacting to an unexpected deficit
- Anchor Allocation with Mission Pillars
- Every dollar spent should be an investment in the association’s core pillars
- Choose from:
- Advancing the University
- Enriching Firm Friendships
- Institutional Stability
- Optimize the Idle Cash Rule
- Actively police the group's balances
- If the group consistently has more than $10,000 in idle cash in the group bank account that is not earmarked for immediate operational costs, strategically plan to transfer those excess funds into the group’s OSU current use or endowment accounts to maximize immediate student scholarship impact
- The “How We Can” Framework
- When the board proposes an ambitious, expensive new initiative, your role is not to shut it down with a simple "we don't have the budget"
- Instead, act as a creative financial partner
- Help the board identify alternative funding sources, adjust pricing tiers, or scale the event phases to make it financially viable
- Eliminate Ambiguity Up Front
- During strategic brainstorming sessions, stop financial ambiguity in its tracks
- Before the board votes to adopt a long-term initiative, ensure a clear budget ceiling and designated funding metric are attached to the proposal
View the Strategic Funding Priority Assessment.
Succession Planning: The Financial Transition
The true strength of a Treasurer's legacy is measured by how seamlessly the next leader can step into the role without starting from scratch. Your records should be so clear that future Treasurers can step in effortlessly.
Maintain a continuous onboarding packet for incoming officers. New Treasurers should feel fully briefed on day one regarding account balances, recurring expenses, and bank signatures because of the quality of your files.
Keep a transition folder containing historical financial reports, banking login protocols, IRS and non-profit status certificates, and essential fiscal timelines.
Participate actively in year-end transition meetings. Physically sit down with your successor to hand over account access, walk them through your ledger systems, and review past annual reports.