Strategic Budgeting Process

Strategy, Management & Budget presents the outcomes from the previous year's strategic budgeting process, including funding allocations in the fiscal year operating budget along with an overview of WWU's budget request to the state.

Prior to the forum, the President's Cabinet decides on the funding priority areas for the upcoming year and the proposal evaluation criteria.

Strategy, Management & Budget releases a template for budget proposal abstracts and opens submission form. Submissions are compiled and distributed to division vice presidents for review.

Vice presidents, deans, and directors from across all divisions are invited to participate in a work session to review and provide feedback on the submitted abstracts. The abstracts from divisions are grouped by priority area and distributed prior to the meeting, and time during the meeting is devoted to small group discussion and generating feedback for the proposal authorss.

Feedback from the Extended Leadership work session is distributed to divisional vice presidents for internal distribution to the proposal authors.

Divisions follow their internal processes to determine which abstracts should be developed further into budget proposals for the February submission deadline.

Proposal authors submit their budget proposal narrative and the completed the budget detail workbook to divisions for internal review.

After budget proposals are submitted from divisions to SMB, the proposals are converted into pdf files and distributed for review and feedback by the campus community.

Proposals are posted online on SMB's Budget Forum webpage which has a form for submitting comments that is open to anyone with a WWU computer account. Comments are moderated for hate speech and then posted on the page for all visitors to see.

The feedback submitted through the Budget Forum are provided to the President's Cabinet prior to their prioritization of proposals.

Using a process similar to the abstract review/feedback workshop, the Extended Leadership group will be invited to review proposals and provide feedback that will be shared with President's Cabinet.

The University Budget Committee (UBC) serves as a central, university advisory committee with members appointed by President Randhawa. The UBC is intended to broaden the perspectives involved in shaping Western's budgeting processes by providing an institutional perspective. 

Staff in Strategy, Management, and Budget monitors and analyzes the State Budget development throughout the Legislative Session. An analysis of the fiscal impacts is developed and posted online for each stage of the budget development. After the State Budget is signed by the Governor, SMB determines the fiscal outcomes and incorporates the impacts into a fiscal year projection model. 

Strategy, Management & Budget incorporates Cabinet's recommendations for new investments or reallocations into the fiscal year revenue and expenditure model to develop the WWU's Fiscal Year Operating Budget for the upcoming year.

Strategy, Management & Budget presents the WWU Fiscal Year Operating Budget to the Board of Trustees at there June meeting. 

The new fiscal year budget goes into effect July 1, and divisions begin strategic planning following the adoption of the WWU Operating Budget by the Board of Trustees. 

Strategy, Management & Budget maintains university budgets in Western's financial systems and initiates a new fiscal year budget using the recurring budget from the previous fiscal year end and adds any new budget allocations. Division budget officers work with SMB to allocate budget based on the division's strategic budgeting processes.

During Cabinet's review of the submitted proposals, they may identify proposals, or elements of synergistic proposals, that are aligned with State and institutional budget priorities and recommend that the proposals be included in the development of decision packages. Decision packages are requests for new funding requests that Western submits to the State.

The Vice President of Business and Financial Affairs presents Cabinet's recommendation for decision package focus areas for approval before decision packages are developed.

Approval from the Board of Trustees is needed before decision packages can be developed. Decision packages may include requests that are critical to maintain and enhance Western's strengths, operational or maintenance funding necessary to operating the university facilities and infrastructure, or new initiatives developed in collaboration with legislators.

Strategy, Management & Budget works with subject matter experts and authors of included proposals to develop the packages that make up Western's request to the State for new budget allocations.

In even years, the State reviews two-year budget requests for funding and Western's biennium budget requests tend to be more expansive in these years. Supplemental Budget requests are submitted in odd years and are requests for funding for the second year of a biennium cycle.