Becoming more strategic in resource allocation at Sinclair Community College
Challenge
How might we increase operations flexibility, leadership reserves to be more strategic in our resource allocation and financial operations?
Strategy
Six-pronged effort:
- Facilitated decision-making at the lowest level to finalize budget
- Offered top-down guidance (e.g., allocated dollars to expense categories, provide guidance around tradeoffs)
- Allowed budget managers to see the full budget, enhanced decision-making for student success
- Brought department chairs together to discuss resource allocation
- Enhanced data-driven decision-making (e.g., invested in data warehousing to create capability to access data and to drive decisions)
- Explored alternative models as a way to enhance student success goals (e.g., performance-based budgeting)
Outcome
Sinclair’s high Financial Responsibility Composite Score, a 4.8 of 5.0 according to the Federal Department of Education, is driven by its responsible debt ratio, lack of debt and safe reserves.
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Institution
