Board of Auditors
The International Relations Council has a lot of programs and activities, and running all of those activities requires some serious cash. Fortunately, some of our programs are actually quite profitable, so on the whole the IRC usually turns a profit each year, which we can then reinvest in our long term goals. All of this poses one problem: with nearly half a million dollars flowing in and out of this organization each year, how does the IRC keep track of it all? The answer is through careful budgeting and auditing, a task handled by the Board of Auditors.
The Board of Auditors, composed of one Chief Auditor and usually five other voting members, has three main responsibilities:
1) Each year in April the Board drafts the budget for the coming year, carefully considering the needs of each program and the goals of the IRC as a whole. Budgeting is at the core of any successful business, as it allows us to make sure that we will continue to be able to operate from year to year.
2) The second responsibility is auditing: each month, the auditors go through the financial transactions of each program in search of irregularities and to make sure that the terms of the budget are enforced. The Board serves the important role of keeping everyone honest in their dealings.
3) Finally, throughout the year the Board is responsible for considering all requests for adjustments to the budget. As programs operate, they sometimes find that they will need to spend more money than originally thought on some part of their operations, and it is up the Board of Auditors to decide whether the program should be granted an increase to cover the new expenditure.
The members of the Board of Auditors are elected each April by the Board of Directors. If you are interested in potentially applying for next year, please contact the current Chief Auditor, Brad Seiler, at seiler@fas.harvard.edu.
2009-10 Board of Auditors
Brad Seiler '10
Chief Auditor
Diane de Gramont '10
Tom Yang '10
Byran Dai '11
Jerry Kung '11
Emily Osborne '12
Tracy Vo '12
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Harvard International Relations Council |
| Promoting International Awareness and Education since 1976 |