The Chronicle of Higher Education has warned that budgets will be even more challenging to balance for higher education in 2024 than in recent years. However, as we barrel towards the end of the year and enter a new education term, budgets will already be stretched thin.
Finding a way to harmonize income and provide a balanced and inclusive education for all students is vital to supporting your work. This includes ensuring that, as a facility, you can keep the lights on and everything running as needed.
But what can you do to ensure that your budget is utilized and managed proactively and effectively? How can you avoid unnecessary delays and prevent resources from being diverted from students? Your role in this is crucial, empowering you to significantly impact your institution’s financial health.
Perform an Energy Audit
This is not just a task but a gateway to potential savings and a greener future. By examining the energy consumption of your premises, you can identify immediate and long-term savings opportunities. From your choice of provider to energy usage within the grounds and the buildings, pinpoint your biggest energy drains and explore ways to reduce your outgoings. It might be that you make a considerable investment in adding solar panels to the building or structures to the grounds. This will generate clean energy and reduce your energy bills for the future. Adding automatic lighting to hallways and lesser-used areas can reduce the risk of light being left on. Alternatively, you can look for more energy-efficient appliances and resources that don’t consume as much power as older models. An energy audit can uncover different areas of your building that are wasting money and give you an idea of how to make changes for reduced consumption. It’s not just about saving money but also about contributing to a more sustainable future, instilling hope for a brighter financial future.
Other options for improved energy performance include smart building upgrades. These upgrades involve the installation of automated control systems in increased areas, such as installing motion-sensor lighting or smart thermostats. These systems can help you manage energy consumption more effectively, reducing waste and saving costs. Additionally, improved building upgrades, such as installing new energy-efficient windows, customized energy solutions, and improved facilities management, can further enhance your institution’s energy efficiency.
Improve Budgeting
It is vital to take a closer look at how you use your budget and control your income and expenditures. How are you processing financial aid applications? How are grants being used? How are donations received and campaigned for? You need to address exactly how you’re balancing the books and the process involved in ensuring that you are on top of finances and that they are being accessed, implemented, and presented correctly.
Again, performing an audit can be invaluable as it will determine your bottlenecks and show you ways to improve your budget and handling. For example, software from financial aid processing companies can help you automate your financial aid, track all payments, and improve the speed at which awards are granted.
Automating donations, putting spending limits in place, and assessing how you use the money available—where you can make cuts—will support your long-term cash flow. For instance, you might consider automating the donation process to ensure a steady stream of income. Even if you need to make initially difficult decisions, finding workarounds for your predicament is easier once you’ve undertaken a financial audit and addressed problem areas directly. These workarounds could include renegotiating contracts, implementing cost-saving measures, or reallocating resources to areas of greater need.
Develop a 5 Year Plan
Using data from previous years’ budgets and spending activity can help you see how much your budget is currently being stretched and what the future will look like. Your data needs to be inclusive of all income sources and your spending in all areas, i.e., training, employees, energy, maintenance, and everything else, and tracked over previous years.
Once you have every single cent accounted for, you need to look at patterns and trends that can indicate your future.
For example, are grants and donations dwindling while your salaries increase? Does equipment cost more, meaning you need to identify new sources of funding to account for this?
You need to determine your goals over the next 5 years and how to get there. Use the collated information for your data accumulation to help you predict future activities and look for gaps that you need to fill to assist you in achieving your plans. But a plan in place gives you a goal to work towards and new challenges to strive for, enabling you to turn your routines around and streamline your budget while ensuring that you retain standards across the board.
