A_Threater_Budget

Chen-Yan (April) 400chinese1112-2 The Greater Euclid Little Theater (GELT), a tax exempt, nonprofit artist organization was experiencing a budget issue. It had exceeded at least 60 days that the theater couldn’t afford its overdue bills. Janet Dobbs, the Vice President for Administration and President-elect of GELT, had decided to put GELT’s financial affairs in order. However, the Board of Directors had rejected the budget proposal she had presented the previous week. In fact, GELT was experiencing another crisis that the board of Directors had split into factions of “artists” and “accountants”. The “accountants”, Dobbs as a representative, want to use the budget as a planning and management tool to deal with the theater's financial affairs. The “artists” view the new budget as a threat to creativity and achieving the organization's mission. They thought artistic values and goals should take precedence over business or financial concerns for a nonprofit arts organization. The fundamental conflict is rooted from different levels of interest in and knowledge of budgeting. One of the reasons is all GELT board members were unpaid volunteers who didn’t care the financial affairs. Some issues should be identified before resolve this controversy. At first, the theater can’t survive under the split of the board, so the basic premise to solve this issue is that the board members could reach an agreement. Beyond that, the theater wouldn’t normal running with a continuous deeper debt. Financial management is also equally important as artistic values. My first solution is to persuade the Board of Directors to support the proposed budget for 2002. To Dobbs, it’s not difficult to convince the Board of Directors, as the negative faction only just wan out one ticket. My second suggestion is to seek a new artist director instead of Spaulding, the current artist director or limit his right to authorize expenditures. Despite of he is an artistic genius, he has little skill in money matters. So Spaulding was partly responsible for the GELT debt. If he continues to authorize expenditures in the absence of revenues, the GELT debt is hard to eliminate. The third solution, the best solution in my opinion, is to modify the proposed budget plan as to pass unanimously. I think GELT financial problem is not too high expenditures; the highlight is low revenues, or rather the expenditures in the absence of revenues. From table 1, the budgeted revenues in 2001 is $93,000 , but the actual revenues in 2001 is $78,300; the budgeted expenditures in 2001 is $93,000, the actual expenditures in 2001 is $79,200. We can see the actual expenditures is not too high, but lower than revenues. The board can’t accept the proposed budget, because they opposed the reduced expenditures. So the new budget can increase expenditures, be close to, but a little lower than 2001 proposed expenditures. Meanwhile, increasing the proposed revenues is also needed. Increasing the actual revenues is the critical success factor in solving GELT financial issue. The optimistic expectations for revenue growth might be more realistic. Increasing the proposed expenditures can help the budget pass unanimously, meanwhile, managing to increase revenues would eliminate debt availably. In addition, this solution of course can’t enkindle any conflict.