Despite a multimillion dollar budget, the Hawkeye athletics department has still faced budget challenges this year.

Since 2007, the athletics department has been completely self-sustaining — meaning its budget receives no money from the UI’s general fund and no state tax dollars. Athletics funding is made up entirely of revenue from the university’s 24 varsity sports.

Athletics Director Gary Barta said there are only 15 to 20 universities that do not rely on state dollars. He acknowledged the switch, which took nearly a decade, has presented added challenges to the department.

“It was a big move for the university,” he said. “The country’s and state’s economies are going through a challenging time.”

In fiscal 2010, the athletics department’s budget will total roughly $65.6 million. The main source of revenue for this budget comes from ticket sales, which generate more than $21.6 million. The department’s main expenses come from employee salaries, which cost around $23.2 million.

This year, the athletics department donated roughly $8.5 million to the university’s general fund to pay for student-athlete scholarships.

Richard Klatt, an associate athletics director, said that if some of the proposed measures, such as the $100 tuition surcharge, were implemented as a result of the state’s budget crisis, the athletics department would have to adjust, too.

Approximately 500 of the 700 student-athletes on campus are on scholarships, meaning the athletics department would have to pay the surcharge fees for those students.

“If that’s approved, [the department] will have to write another check for the surcharge,” Klatt said. “It’s one of those things — when we learned it was an option, we began to determine how it will affect the budget.”

Besides scholarship funding, the department does not donate other money to the general fund, though Klatt sees the possibility as a “worthwhile” objective.

“Right now, it’s not set as a goal,” he said. “But we hope to be so successful that it’s something we can do [in the future].”

The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor’s athletics department is also self-sufficient, and it plans to donate $1.6 million to the school’s general fund this fiscal year.

Like the UI, Michigan receives the majority of its sporting revenue from ticket sales, with a total fund revenue of more than $94 million. The university also donates money to the general fund to pay for athletes’ scholarships.

Though affected by the current economic difficulties, factors such as steady ticket sales have helped anchor both Michigan and the UI’s athletics budgets.

“So far, we are fortunate to have similar attendance revenues as in prior years,” Michigan athletics department chief financial officer Jason Winters wrote in an e-mail. “Our corporate sponsorship revenue stream is guaranteed via our out-sourcing relationship with [sports marketing company] IMG.”

At the UI, officials have braced for a difficult year financially.

Athletics department officials decided last spring to cut 5 percent from their budget to compensate for a predicted slump in ticket sales. Barta said such cuts were made in every area including athletics department administration. Officials did not grant salary increases this year as a way to minimize expenses.

“The reduction is a direct byproduct of the economic situation,” said Klatt. “It’s 100 percent attributable to the expectation that ticket sales would be down because of the economic situation. We know that tickets are a luxury, not a necessity.”

However, he said, the football team’s success has led to higher-than-expected ticket sales.