Leveraging Your Budget for Goals and Activities

How can you leverage whatever budget you have to accomplish your section’s goals? The more limited your resources, the clearer your goals and action plans must be and the more creative you'll need to be. Start by thinking about and discussing your section's goals for the year. Identify the most important ones. Determine the easiest goals to achieve. Focus on the goals that will make the biggest impact on the section, its members, and the community. Don't give into the temptation to spread your energy and your money too thinly. Don't placate the biggest complainers. Set clear objectives, and figure out how to measure the success as well as the failure of an activity.

Add up your actual income from dues, allocations, donors, and investments for the year. Subtract all fixed expenses: travel, administrative costs, fees, annual awards, etc. The remaining amount is what you have to work with for your activities.

Group your goals and objectives into categories: activities that require no money, some money, a bit of money, and a lot of money.

Add a column next to each categorized goal, and write in the expected amount of money requested for the activity. Add everything up. Is the amount less than the section’s operating budget after fixed expenses have been subtracted? Yes—great! Make sure you put the extra cash left over in your reserves for unexpected expenses or to fund an endowment if your section has one.

If your answer is no—rats. You’ll have to make some decisions about your activities and their funding. First, look in your own backyard. Can you combine activities to reduce costs? Have you checked the ACS resources available to sections and its members? Could untapped resources in your community share the costs for any activity on the list? Could ongoing activities in your community complement your anticipated programming? For example, some museums, schools, and organizations will donate meeting space for an event that can be advertised to their members as well as ACS members. Speaking of ACS members, have you asked your membership for ideas about hosting meetings or activities? Some companies practice corporate citizenship. Once you’ve added these considerations to your categorized list, you might need to reorganize it.

You’ll have to make some value judgments for your goals. If an activity will cost nothing (money-wise), then check it off. If the activity is funded with outside money, check it off. Take a hard look at the individual budgets for your goals and activities. Is it necessary to spend so much? Can the costs be reduced by buying cookies from a store versus catering? Don’t penny-pinch, but make sure the costs are realistic. Reorganize the list if necessary. For the others, ask yourself this: is the impact worth the cost? For example, if the cost is $500 and you anticipate 50 participants, the cost is $10/person. Is it worth it? Are there extenuating circumstances? If you have another event that costs less and reaches more people, then maybe you should fund that activity and reduce the funding of others. You will have to decide which impact is most valuable and necessary to your section. Bigger isn’t always better.

If you end up with activities that won’t be funded, you’ll need to practice some diplomacy with the volunteer organizers and give them advice about how to fund their activities. Suggest funding sources and perhaps provide templates for soliciting money. You don’t want to turn people off—you want to empower them.

Prioritizing your section’s activities within your budget will help you reach your goals.

Victoria Finkenstadt, Chair
Subcommittee on Technology, Tools and Operations
ACS Committee on Local Section Activities