I have developed my skills with numbers through my experience in program coordination and event management. My first major experience developing a budget for work was in my role as Program Enhancement Coordinator with the Centre for Learning@HOME (CFL). I started my role with the CFL during a time where the management of the Program Enhancement team was changing. My predecessor wasn’t required to keep a budget, so there was no template to work from.
The CFL is a part of a publicly funded school board. The CFL is a school that serves families choosing to homeschool their children. As a publicly funded school, the board is required to post the annual budget for the public to see each year. Therefore, it was integral for us to track how much we spent on programming. My role was to plan an annual program that included supplemental events and activities to assist to students in meeting the Alberta Education learning outcomes. Our families receive funding from the government for each student to supplement their education. This could include something like piano lessons, ballet lessons or the programming that I ran. If the parents wanted to use the funding to purchase lessons or supplemental text from outside of the school they were required to pay out of pocket and then submit their receipts for reimbursement. If the parents opted to take advantage of the programming we offered, they had the option for our accounting team to take the funding out of their allotment, so they didn’t have to pay anything up front.
This part of my role was a balancing act. The school wasn’t supposed to lose money from the programming we ran but because the money to provide these programs was publicly funded we also couldn’t make money from it. I learned how to balance our program costs. Program expenses varied depending on the type of program. We often had to pay at least a month in advance. I had to learn how to estimate enrollment. Expenses could be charged per person or per program booked. I learned how to balance the program fee if it was preset to minimize expenses for our families and the school. I created a monthly and annual budget for the area I served (Edmonton and the greater north). This served as a template to use each month. Every month I submitted my expenses (10.1) to my supervisor and accounting department for review. I consulted previous enrollment data to predict expenses for each program. I set the program fee to recover costs at 70% enrollment of the maximum capacity if the program fee was predetermined.
I also created an annual provincial budget (1.3) to be reviewed at the end of the school year meetings. The annual budget included my profit and loss for the year. It also included what I anticipated my expenses to be for the upcoming year. I learned how to effectively plan and budget for my programming expenses. Items in this budget included my travel expenses, professional development, required programming supplies or equipment and other miscellaneous items. This was assessed and evaluated at our year end meeting for approval.
My interim position as Events Coordinator in the Advancement Department gave me further experience in budgeting. A part of my responsibilities at the 2019 Foundation Gala was the raffle. At the 2019 Foundation Gala we ran two raffles. I was responsible for licensing, sponsorship of the raffle prize and evaluating the sales after the event. My role included maximizing sponsorship to increase sales. In 2019, we purchased a $5000.00 travel voucher for the raffle through our sponsor for a live auction item. They donated a trip for our live auction because we purchased the travel voucher. Our second raffle item was a pearl necklace that was donated. We sold tickets for this at a lower cost to increase sales. This raffle was a success and we be used again in future years.