Using Groups Funds for Alcohol

There may be times when as a student group you want to spend some of your club or society funds on alcohol. 

The Students' Union does not typically approve finance requests for groups to spend money on alcohol. The reason for this is that alcohol does not serve a purpose towards achieving the goals and objectives of any student group, so therefore is not a reasonable use of funds. There are some groups which are exceptions to this rule such as Cocktail Appreciation Society or Cheese & Wine Society. 

There are other implications to consider when buying alcohol for your members, such as that often not all your members will have access to the benefit of this spending, this can be unfair, and that some of your members may be under the age of 18. 

We understand that occasionally there will be acceptable and fair reasons for using group funds to purchase alcohol, such as to purchase a thank you gift for a guest speaker or coach, or to celebrate at an end of year meal. In the latter scenario, such spending should be accounted for in a ticket price to cover the costs. 

In any attempt to use group funds for alcohol, you should also include sufficient details and justification within any SGF request, and a member of the SU team will be in touch regarding your request if more information is needed, or if they see a problem with the request. Or, you should make attempts to contact the SU about this request before submitting it on SGF.