Aspects of financial management at the culture house of students of Ploiesti.

Mihai, Maria Valia ; Buzoianu, Daniela-Angela

1. INTRODUCTION

Romanian Students' Houses of Culture are state structures meant to continue the process of education and to contribute to the artistic and civic culture formation of the young generation by means of their cultural artistic and non-formal activities. These institutions represent an alternative of spending the free time performing activities that ennoble the spirit and strengthen the character; they are an important source of discovering new talents in artistic domains such as music, theatre, etc.

Since the achievement of artistic and cultural acts within these institutions is closely dependent on financing sources, the present paper proposes itself to point out, starting with the Students' House of Culture of Ploiesti University financial management analysis, the important role of the human factor, of the managerial team in capitalizing the conjectural situations determined by an atypical economy which has characterized and characterizes the Romanian economy for the last nineteen years. Thus the objectives of Students' Houses can be actually attained.

2. CONTAIN PAPER

The Students' House of Culture in Ploiesti is one of the 14 similar Houses in Romania. It is coordinated by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports which has as principle objective to promote and cultivate among higher education students the passion for the cultural values of the mioritic space of Romania.

Situated in the center of Petroleum and Gas University of Ploiesti campus, prestigious institution at both national and international level, the Students' House has permanently asserted itself through its cultural performance activated by talented and devoted actors, students who have developed their artistic potential here. The result of their enthusiasm was repaid in numerous festivals and performances, in important partnerships concluded by the Petroleum and Gas University.

Although the years that followed 1998 were not fruitful for this realm of spirituality and beauty, The Students' House of Culture made its cultural message visible, in recurrent cultural events, in its concerts, dramatics, musicals or exhibitions. All these events were possible owing to more and more students taking part in the artistic programs, aware that they represent the main promoters of the Romanian traditions at home and abroad.

The cultural events organized by the Students' House of Culture are famous at both the local and national level. Every year, The Students' House of Culture organizes the Cultural Festival of Student Art with contest performances such as: "Spring Harmonies", "Miss Universitas", "Autumn Harmonies", "Student Rhythms--The Freshpersons' Ball", "The Student Dance Festival", "An Evening in the World of Thalia", artistic events that have already become popular and are appreciated at the national level.

The members of the artistic groups, demonstrating a genuine calling in matter of innovation and artistic experiment, dedicated their spare moments to a passionate and complex endeavour, creating performances themselves, directing shows and plays, designing stage setting, tranformation scenes, lights, posters, etc. In this way, they have contributed to the financial effort of the institution, making it acceptable; indirectly, they contribute to the creation of an additional financing source.

The artisctic-cultural activity cannot be supported and encouraged without an adequate financial potential. Insufficient financial support, every year felt with more intensity, obliged many Houses of Culture in Romania to abandon their cultural activity or to pay less attention to it, replacing it with adjacent activities capable of creating their own incomes, such as hiring out spaces to various organizations and firms, these being some of the most frequently used methods.

During the last 18 years, the Houses of Culture in Romania were the object of dispute among ministries, being coordinated by the Ministry of Education, the Prime Minister Chancellery through the Youth National Authority, and the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, respectively, the last starting its supervision this year.

Irrespective of the name of the tutelary authority, from the financial point of view, The Student Houses of Culture were and are dependent on the budgetary resourses allocated by the respective authority. The budgetary funds allocated from the state budget are known as appropriation, given in addition to the institution own incomes and having as their main aim to cover the personnel expenditures as well as those of the cultural-artistic events.

When situations require it, grants are given to certain expenditures involving services, goods, and capital.

The Students' House of Culture in Ploiesti achieves its financial management through its right to conduct the financial resources assigned by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, within the legal framework, its own incomes included.

The financial funds are allocated by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports to the Houses of Culture in keeping with the projects, programs and grounding notes sent by the latter to be granted. The financial practice, during the 18 year transition period, demonstrate that the amounts included in the programs, projects and grounding notes sent to the Ministry by the Ploiesti House of Culture represent merely informative materials, the budgeted grant being far inferior to that resulted from the grounding note. The financing mechanism is fairly simple, thus, through the annual budgetary law the state allocates the grant destined to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports which, in its turn, after deducing its own amounts for its own financing, divides the rest of the grant among the institutions it coordinates in a less than transparent manner.

The positive aspect, so to say, is the fact that the grant has covered, every year, the personnel expenditures, which are strictly controlled from the center on the basis of legal minimum and maximum level of wage brackets, the expenditures for goods, services, cultural and artistic activities and capital ones being left uncovered.

Under the circumstances the financial policy is based on the increase of an efficient use of resources, on achieving the youth national policy and on backing up the student cultural and artistic activities. Similarly, more and more emphasis is laid on additional financing sources coming from local business environment and stockholders, as well as from public-private partnerships.

A genuine financial management calls for a certain degree of autonomy in resource administration (Dinca, 2002); in the case of the House of Culture, this autonomy is not functional. The extremely low level of internal incomes, together with the practice of allocating the budgetary subvention every month, are conditions that make impossible a financial strategy, even a short term one.

Moreover, the strict destination of the subvention on budgetary lines, i.e. personnel, goods and services, cultural and artistic and capital expenditures, without the possibility of redistributing or compensating gains with the inevitable deficits that appear among these budgetary lines, all these diminish evem more the decisional capacity at the level of entity in this delicate financing domain.

If we are to add that the amounts that have not been spent from the budgetary subventions, transferred to the budget at the end of the financial year, we could have the whole picture of the extremely narrow limits of operation so as to raise the efficiency of financial resource use.

Within this financial policy it was important to establish the immediate and stand-by financing priorities, which involved postponing certain activities which, important as they are, had to wait the gathering of necessary funds.

As a result of these rigid and strict rules of using the subvention in financing its activity, The House of Culture focused its attention on diversifying its financial resources, its own incomes, providing not only an additional financial source, but also more flexibility in the way these incomes are managed.

The insufficient financing from the state budget requires indentifying and capitalizing extra-budgetary resources, making an effort to complement the institution own necessary funds. To this end, the following elements are considered:

* Developing strategic partnerships with commercial organizations, associations, vocational organizations, educational institutions;

* Donations and sponsorships;

* Participation in various local, national and international project auctions;

* Ticket sales cultural and artistic events;

* Engagement of local authorities in the process of development of the Students' House of Culture in Ploiesti;

* Advertizing and publicity services.

The following table presents the evolution of internal incomes for the last 5 years:

Although own incomes are present annually in the budget of the institution, their level is steadily decreasing. The only exception was in 2004 when the level of own incomes improved, representing over 40% of the total budget; during the next years the percentage was not above 10%.

The decreasing level of own incomes may be also a consequence of the general economic situation of Romania which has registered a delay in economic growth; the variations from one year to another denote the lack of a medium and long term strategy of maintaining, developing and capitalizing these funds.

The budgeted subventions have an uncompetitive character in that they are not conditioned by the quality of the cultural act performed by the cultural houses; the prizes and rewards obtained at the national and international contests or participation in them represent the measure of such quality.

We consider that the distribution of a part of the budget appropriation on a performance basis can have a two-fold benefit: a higher quality standard of the cultural and artistic activities and of competition between the houses of culture and an efficient use of budgetary resources.

The public private partnerships that the House of Culture has contracted have contributed to the increase of sponsorship level which is indicative of a good path taken and of a valid alternative. This represents a solution to budget appropriation reduction that is to be applied for the near future.

The donations and sponsorships have been less of a material form and more of goods and services been provided for the artistic groups and the student artists that have been the winners of the contests organized at local and national level.

The approach of the House of Culture managerial team concentrated on public and private partnerships with a view to accessing national and European funds designed for cultural activity development. These can have a stronger impact than traditional donations and sponsorships.

3. CONCLUSION

With a view to integrating the financial system into the overall conception of institutional reform, it is necessary to improve the way in which decisions are formulated and grounded concerning the dimensioning of the budgetary sources.

The concerted effort of the Student Houses of Culture should determine a more efficient manner of allocating the subvention, so as its budgeting to occur each term and thus the budgetary lines to be adjusted to the concrete needs of each institution, to the situation in.

4. REFERENCES

Cristea L. (2001). The quality of education act, Alternative Economic Strategies, Era, 2001

Dinca, G. (2002). Financial Management and institutional Relationships with Civil Society, Unesco-Cepex, Bucharest

Moldovenu, M.; Valeriu, F. (1997). Marketing and Culture, Ed. Expert, Bucharest

Szakats, I. Alt Art Foundation, Available from: http://www.ecumest.ro Accessed: 2009-06-13

*** Government Decree nr. 801/2004 concerning the students' houses of culture organization and functioning

Tab. 1. Evolution of internal incomes
Euro

Indicator 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Subvention 49189 91950 152198 273808 199739
Own income 35878 4867 25196 13827 7864
Donation/ 1100 1560 1350 1890 2760
 sposorships
Total 86167 98377 178744 289525 210363