The Division II Presidents Council focused August 5 on making certain that the division's fiscal resources are used responsibly.

The presidents approved Division II budgets for the next two years -- $30.3 million for 2004-05 and $30. 9 million for 2005-06. About 70 percent of the funding for both of the next two years will come from Division II's constitutionally guaranteed share of NCAA revenue (4.37 percent), with the remainder coming from unallocated surplus funds from previous years.

While the continuing growth of the Association's contract with CBS has enabled Division II to create and expand a number of membership-friendly grant programs, the presidents took actions at their recent meeting that demonstrated a strong desire for the money to be spent productively and purposefully.

First, the presidents -- acting on a report from the Division II Budget and Finance Committee -- agreed that more oversight is needed for the Division II conference grant program. That program requires conferences to apply for grant money based on a menu of options, such as the enhancement of diversity, academics or technology, among others. There are required and discretionary uses of the funding, but in all cases, conferences must describe in their applications how the money will be used and report at the end of the academic year how the money was spent and how it enhanced the conference.

Last year, the Budget and Finance Committee noted that three conferences used 2002-03 grant money in ways that did not match what was described in their applications. The conferences were warned at the time, but in its review of 2003-04 grants, the Budget and Finance Committee discovered similar problems with the same three conferences.

John Keating, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, said that the division should feel generally good about the fact that 20 of 23 conferences appear to be benefiting from the funding as it was intended. However, he also noted that the noncompliance of the three conferences suggests that a penalty structure is necessary.

With that in mind, the Presidents Council supported a Budget and Finance Committee proposal to place conferences that do not comply in the future on probation, with the option to completely withhold grant money if the misuse of the funds is ongoing or sufficiently serious. Such a penalty has the potential to be severe since each conference soon will be eligible for more than $100,000 in annual grant money.

Some presidents believed that the offending conferences should be dealt with more harshly at this time (one president noted that many educational associations would have demanded that they return the money immediately). However, Division II Vice-President Mike Racy reminded the group that while conferences were told to honor their commitments, no penalties were prescribed in the grant guidelines for those that didn't.

"We should make sure it is used for conference enhancements and not just used for ongoing activities," said Nancy Belck, chancellor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

In the future, Keating said that conferences will receive a notice from the Budget and Finance Committee that their use of the grant money was acceptable, that it merited a warning or that it merits probation. In the latter two cases, letters will be sent to the conference commissioner and the presidents of each member institution in the conference. the letters will state that an audit of grant expenses will be ordered if problems arise.

The presidents also agreed that any conference on probation for violating conference grant guidelines will be ineligible to receive funding from the new intern program for minority coaches. That program, which will become effective September 1, will provide a total of $300,000 to Division II member conferences to fund coaching internships. The first year will be devoted to developing program guidelines and collecting applications, with no awards being made until 2005-06, when $600,000 would be available. Thereafter, $300,000 would be awarded annually unless the number is adjusted.

The intern program is one of two major initiatives resulting from the work of the Division II Project Team to Review Issues Related to Diversity. The other will be a collection of best practices that Division II institutions use to build diverse candidate pools when hiring coaches or administrators.

"We should be very clear as to why we did this," said Presidents Council Chair George Hagerty, president of Franklin Pierce College. "This wasn't just something we thought was a good idea. There are some very strong indicators over the last 10 years that we have actually gone backward on diversity when it comes to hiring practices of our head coaches."

The presidents noted that while $300,000 is a large amount, it has the potential to be divided 23 ways among the conferences. It therefore recommended that conferences give preference to institutions that are willing to identify matching funds as they award the money.

Other highlights

Division II Presidents Council
August 5/Indianapolis