Ideas for managing the college or university fund-raising budget include evaluating the current budget for effectiveness and adding to the budget through such means as billing for services, borrowing from current funds, using early interest on gifts, "taxing" incoming gifts, raiding a discretionary account, using a windfall, using early gifts, and…

Strategic planning enables colleges to direct discretionary dollars into high-impact areas that can enhance critical core activities, improving output. When the institution can disinvest financial resources in weak or noncritical core areas and redirect them through careful budgeting, it improves its chances for success. (MSE)

Defines zero-based budgeting, compares it to traditional budgeting, and discusses five steps of a zero-base budget model: determining organization's goals and refining them into objectives; listing activities to achieve objectives in decision packages; evaluating decision packages; ranking packages by order of importance; and funding decision…

Medical Research conducted in the patient care setting is facing a new financial barrier, the prospective payment system. Both university and hospitals must rethink clinical research resource use. This may result in better accountability for research costs and affect the hospitals' willingness to conduct experimental or innovative treatments. (MSE)

Director of Iowa State University's Media Resources Center argues that fiscal progress is the most reliable measure of functional progress or growth. How money is controlled to allow for allocation of funds and manipulation of service priorities is described as well as how service functions are managed. (MBR)

To meet demand for increased funding, in a period of probable declining investment returns, colleges and universities must fine-tune their asset suballocations to enhance returns. While the institution should adhere to major asset allocation classes, there can be much flexibility, and enhanced return, in shifting suballocations within the major…

Campus activities programmers are offered suggestions to make the budgeting process clearer. They include knowing funding sources, understanding distribution of funds, monitoring encumbered funds, developing a system to keep track of how funds are spent, avoiding overspending and handling re-appropriations, setting aside reserves, and asking for…

School district budgeting is a daunting process. To help administrators, board members, and teachers who are not as knowledgeable on the subject as they feel they need to be, a practical manual on the budget-development process is offered here. Three themes are established early in the book: "budgeting is planning"; "administration in budgeting is…

In order to develop a financial plan for and identify constraints on the production of distance learning materials, a total human resources development (HRD) plan must be produced, and endorsed by the highest level of management. The HRD plan sets out the human resources needed to secure the organization's future in terms of people and their…

This description of the role of budgets in nonprofit organizations uses libraries as an example. Four types of budgets--legislative, management, cash, and capital--are critiqued in terms of cost effectiveness, implementation, and facilitation of organizational control and objectives. (CLB)

Five strategies for realistic deficit management in the college or university during fiscal stress are examined: (1) comprehensive strategic and operational budget planning; (2) examination of tenure-stream faculty positions; (3) program review and evaluation; (4) self-supporting auxiliary and service units; and (5) increased flexibility in use of…

Learning activities that expose students to the concepts of economics are presented, using concrete examples involving the daily activities of zoos and their visitors. The activities call for students to identify zoo expenses, evaluate decisions about zoo spending, and consider the financial and moral costs of treating animals humanely. (JDD)

State case studies of resource management for higher education are examined to develop a framework for use at all levels in analyzing current state finance policy. A resource management approach that can be used in several ways in the review and planning process is outlined. (MSE)

Cost-saving ideas and strategies for school districts are presented. Superintendents, school business officials, assistant superintendents of personnel and union leaders at 41 of Long Island's 125 school districts responded to a survey soliciting information about successful ideas and strategies they had used to keep cost down. They described what…

Offers a four-stage process to formalize school budgetary procedures, covering goals and philosophy, employee responsibilities, consistent budgetary allocation procedures, and comprehensive evaluation of the budgetary process. (JW)