Failure to link the budget to the strategic plan leads to the budget becoming the plan.

The University of North Dakota Strategic Plan explicitly identifies how budgeting will be linked to planning includeing the role of the University Budget and Planning Committee. General guidelines to accomplishing this were outlined in 2001.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES:

• Institutional commitment and commitment of campus leadership
• Broad participation in planning and budgeting
• Use of both a bottom-up and a top-down approach
• Widespread and frequent communication
• Multiple points of contact between the plan and the budget as part of the regular process
• Resources, information & rewards
• Adequate time and a continuous cycle. Things will always take longer than expected.

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS FOR LINK TO OCCUR:

• Motive - General agreement on values, goals and priorities is needed
• Opportunity - Timely contact between budgeting and planning issues is necessary
• Method - Tools and trained users need to be in place (process, schedule, benchmakrs, reports, etc.)

APPROACHES TO FUNDING STRATEGIC PLAN PRIORITIES:

• Allocate new resources to achieve strategic plan goals including
  • State appropriation
  • Tuition (increase in rate versus increase in enrollment)
  • Grants and contracts
  • Gifts
  • Partnerships
• Improvements without increased costs
  • Change institutional delivery methods
  • Refocus
  • Alter overall process or implement new methods in existing setting
  • Gain economies of scale
• Realign current resources to achieve goals
  • Evaluate current programs and/or departments
  • Discontinue unnecessary or ineffective programs and/or departments
  • Adjust size of programs and/or departments
  • Consolidation
  • Re-engineering
  • "Growth by Substitution"
• Validate connection between use of current resources and institutional goals
  • Develop and utilize data to support decisions
  • Develop standards and indicators of success
  • Incentives for progress toward goals

PROCEDURES:

• Initital Implementation
  • Translate goals into annual actions or deliverables
  • Prioritize actions
  • Allocate resources to support highest priority action (variation: allocate base budget as a starting point)
• Recurring
  • Measure progress in meeting last year's action plan
    • Qualitative: List of accomplishments
    • Quantitative: Measure progress against target/goal
  • Revise actions and identify new actions
  • Prioritize needs
  • Allocate resources

CONSIDERATIONS:

• Organizational structure/hierarchy of institution
• Governance structure and committees
• Departmental reallocation versus institutional reallocation
• Annual investment to facilitate change
• "Needs-Based" plan
• Creation and maintenance of institutional assets
• Allocation or use of assets to achieve priorities

Information above taken from UND Budget Outline Document 11/07/01