NYState University

Brooklyn College

Assessing Needs, Refining Practices, and Sustaining Improved Ways of Working

Budget Transparency & Communication

About Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is a public institution and part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Facing an unprecedented structural budget deficit and drastically declining enrollment numbers, the chief business officer (CBO) hoped to better understand his colleagues' perspectives on budgeting processes and engagement with the budget office. The budget office works closely with approximately 170 budget managers across campus.

Improvement Project

Better Budget Office Practices to Build Capacity for Change

Toolkit Used

Budget Process Assessment

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Results

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.

The Full Story

Enrollment declines resulted in a material structural budget deficit at Brooklyn College, and the CBO recognized that, with changes to funding priorities on the horizon, there was a need to enhance budget-related communications. Training and informational resources that support budget processes would need to be updated, and current approaches to sharing information needed to be evaluated and potentially updated. The CBO customized and refined the assessment, selecting questions that were best aligned with institutional practices and goals. The assessment was sent to 167 internal campus stakeholders via email, with a 1-month timeline for response. The survey generated a 50% response rate. Responses reflected material gaps in awareness of processes and identified areas of opportunity to improve budget office mechanisms to support the needs of budget managers.

“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