Managing part of an organization’s budget was not something I was taught how to do in library school. However, in my first job, I was given financial responsibilities with no on-the-job training and few parameters for how to responsibly steward those funds. Once becoming a department head, I used an equity lens to develop my own budget management toolkit that operationalized my fiscal strategy and brought transparency to what is often an opaque part of library management.
In this participatory session, attendees will learn the key components of and how to implement that toolkit within their organizational context. The four components include 1) Knowing where your money is and what it can be spent on; 2) Developing a budget strategy to support your program and key objectives; 3) Communicating both internally within your unit and externally to key stakeholders how you’ve spent your funds; 4) Writing a funding proposal to gain additional support from library administration or outside funders. Using a series of guiding questions made available through discussion boards, participants will begin to apply the components of the toolkit to their own practice.
Such a toolkit empowers managers to take an active role in the budgeting process. Even those without a formal role or responsibilities for a budget, should have a foundational understanding of the who, what, when, where, why, and how associated with such a process to then be able to leverage that knowledge and secure support for their initiatives.
