Managing Budgets When It’s Raining Money

HERF, CARES, Grants, Categoricals, and more…

Financial Stewardship

It’s mid-April. The academic semester ends in five to six weeks. The fiscal year ends in ten weeks. And, there’s a good chance your college and district have, what we reluctantly admit to, too much money to spend. Let’s prioritize a few ideas and then talk about a quick-tracking funds approach.

Potential Spending Categories

Infrastructure: Internet access/Wifi upgrades, updated classrooms with furniture that supports strategic enrollment management goals, safety (video, parking, room access) are a good starting place. Why? With deferred maintenance limitations, portions of these funds that target reopening can enhance to become ‘reopening as we want and previously could not afford.’ When it comes to infrastructure, think about the next ten years, not the pandemic shift.

ERP and other data adventures: At first blush, with the return to work complexities, changing up your Enterprise Resource Planning system (i.e., Banner, PeopleSoft, Colleague, Workday) seems an absurd idea. Suppose your data integrity causes multiple processes, creates manual methods, and wastes employee time correcting errors. In that case, I offer this may be the time to pony up on building the support team you need to get data, cloud, ERP, and processes accurate, timely, and consistent. We talk about ERP changes or improvement costs — now is when funds to support student, college, and district data integrity can happen.

Equity in faculty hiring: The CCCCO Minimum Qualifications (pages 85–86) details setting up faculty internship programs. Now is an opportune time to encourage diverse faculty part-time pools from classified staff/management, area graduate school programs, K-12 teachers, industry retirees, local entrepreneurs, etc. Imagine the benefit to students when a dedicated classified member teaches a class or when an industry leader teaches a CTE course in their specialization.

Part-time student improved enrollment/registration access: How can we outreach and offer a fast-access, great support system for our part-time students? CCCApply + EdPlan + FAFSA + … = way too much for anyone interested in exploring a couple of lifelong learning classes. Think Amazon: Can we somehow CCCApply + a one-click purchase? In some areas, part-time students are now 70%+ of enrollment.

The categories above may or may not relate to your college or district. Their purpose is to encourage you to think long-term forward rather than getting back to pre-pandemic. We are stewards of the next several decades for our colleges. Let’s assume you’ve identified a couple of significant priorities. Next comes tracking money in what feels like at warp speed.

1. Review what can and can’t be purchased (allowable expenses) with your team, along with matching funds requirements and grant spending dates. Create a simple spreadsheet as a quick snapshot for tracking current, encumbered, and upcoming expenses. Don’t rely on your Business Services/Accounting offices to manage this. They have their hands full with the compliance accounting needed.
2. As you determine purchases, take time to send out requirements or packages to new vendors so that Business Services/Accounting/Purchasing have what they need to set up vendor accounts for timely purchasing.
3. Refresh your understanding of the budget change request process; you can make allowable changes within the project’s intent as you learn and implement. Budget change requests can be confusing with the GL (general ledger) code credits and debits.
4. Never ask your Accounting staff how much money you have left. Once a month, perhaps check your balances to theirs after you validate what’s in college/district accounting software. They may be a few weeks off, the same as you may be a few weeks off. An occasional check-in is fine. What’s important is that you support them to support you with regular, accurate numbers for reporting.
5. Keep the pandemic in mind; supply chain issues, available installers, escalating costs, and a general slowing of business require you to be organized and purchase with more than enough time to absorb delays.
6. Confirm college/district Purchasing allowable windows. Sometimes, toward year-end, when purchasing halts, permission will be granted to secure non-general fund equipment and supplies (shout out to the amazing West Valley-Mission Purchasing Department and Brigit Espinosa, Director of General Services).
7. Understand the difference between construction and maintenance. Construction should be avoided with these projects, if possible, due to the State Architect’s timelines. Maintenance does not require state approval, your Facilities administrators are an essential partner and source for campus and district projects.

It’s dicey to be organized and early when navigating the current storm. However, this atypical opportunity may be the best use of your time. In talking with Brian Boomer, world-famous West Hills CCD grant getter, the funds we secure and the projects we manage in this rainstorm may be our most significant contributions in years.

Thanks, Kelly