Improving Budget Office Practices and Budget Processes at Brooklyn College
Impact at a Glance
Established a baseline for understanding budget office needs
Identified gaps in budget knowledge and support
Improved access to budget expertise and assistance
Created new web-based training and information resources
Built a process to measure progress and continuously improve
The Challenge
Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, faced a structural budget deficit driven by declining enrollment. With funding priorities expected to change, the budget office needed to strengthen communication and better support approximately 170 budget managers across campus.
Leaders wanted to better understand:
- How stakeholders perceived existing budget processes
- Where gaps in budget knowledge existed
- How communications and training could be improved
- What additional support budget managers needed
Establishing a baseline would help the budget office prioritize improvements and prepare the campus community for future budget changes.
The Action
Brooklyn College used NACUBO’s Budget Process Assessment to gather feedback from campus stakeholders and identify opportunities to improve budget office services.
The college:
- Customized the assessment to reflect institutional practices and goals
- Simplified responses to an agree/disagree format
- Surveyed 167 campus stakeholders
- Achieved a 50% response rate
- Used the findings to develop a multi-phase improvement plan
Survey results identified gaps in awareness of budget processes and opportunities to improve communications, access, and support for budget managers.
The Results
Immediate Impact
- Centralized online requests for budget assistance
- Improved matching of requests with appropriate subject matter experts
- Established dedicated budget office hours and virtual walk-in support
- Enhanced communications with campus stakeholders
Process Improvements
- After customizing the Budget Process Assessment, Brooklyn College successfully deployed the survey to its budget office stakeholders. Responses reflected a need to strengthen campus-wide understanding of budget processes and identified opportunities to improve support for budget managers.
- Actions were taken to improve support for budget managers and the campus community, including developing a new model to respond to requests for assistance submitted to the budget office and creating web-based training and information resources.
Ongoing Momentum
- Continue improving resources based on user data and feedback
- Develop written procedures and document work processes
- Strengthen continuity when staff positions change
- Repeat the assessment to measure progress against the original baseline
“The key to addressing budget challenges and preparing people for change across the institution is to help people understand more about planning, budgeting, and finance activities. People need to understand and have confidence in budget office processes and communications, and see that we are not hiding anything, so my team and I needed to figure out what people knew, and where we had to do a better job at sharing information.”
Alan GilbertSenior Vice President for Finance and Administration
Related Use Cases
Improving Communications to Strengthen Budget Transparency
Transforming Transfer Enrollment and Budget Processes
