The Office of Financial Affairs has created a financial innovators award known as the Financial Affairs Service and Innovation Award, and the office announced its first recipient, Lacy Needham, assistant athletics director-business operations.

This award has been created to recognize those throughout the university who make significant and lasting contributions to the U of A through bold, innovative and creative approaches to common, everyday university problems. The award is open to any university faculty, non-faculty, academic, administrative or skilled crafts/service/maintenance employees who bring forward fresh ideas that lead to process efficiencies, cost savings and/or increased productivity. Each quarter one employee will be selected to receive the award and then at the end of the calendar year an annual award winner will be selected from the four quarterly winners.

Needham was nominated for her work on developing a prepaid debit card. In early 2020 a working group was organized to discuss the potential for providing student athletes and traveling program staff with a reloadable, prepaid debit card that could be used for per-diem and/or stipend monies. Prepaid debit cards are not only a more student-friendly financial solution, they also streamline the disbursement process while decreasing the known security risks associated with cash advances.

The work of the group soon took a backseat to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the U of A pivot to remote learning, and entire sports seasons canceled. When the working group reconvened in early summer of 2021, the Financial Affairs team members were focused on fiscal year-end financial reporting and unable to do much more than provide consulting advice. Needham, fully recognizing the tremendous benefit that having a reloadable, prepaid debit card would provide, was undeterred and took it upon herself to single-handedly "do the heavy lifting" necessary to get the program up and running. Needham handled everything from the coordination of card logistics with the university's banking partner, development of efficient and effective Workday business processes and workflows, to creation of a training program to teach student athletes responsible card use.

Needham's exemplary work in bringing the university's prepaid debit card program to fruition and reinventing the way per diem money is provided to student athletes and traveling program staff is a significant step forward for university operations. Other programs, such as the Study Abroad program, will be able to leverage Lacy's groundwork as they build out their own prepaid debit card programs.

Recently, Needham's willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty even extended beyond the prepaid debit card program when she again worked directly with the university's banking partner to provide single-use prepaid cards to university guests and other traveling party members as the Razorbacks traveled to the Outback Bowl.

Needham has made a significant and lasting contribution to the U of A through her work in developing and piloting a reloadable, prepaid debit card program. It is for that reason we could think of no one more deserving of our inaugural Financial Affairs Service and Innovation Award than Lacy Needham.