A professional in higher education for more than three decades, Emmanuel Gonsalves most recently served as vice president of finance and strategy at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Emmanuel Gonsalves was directly involved with managing budget initiatives.
In higher education, there are numerous approaches for handling a budget. Among them are incremental and zero-based budgeting. The latter requires all departments and personnel soliciting funding to resubmit new requests outlining their need and intent. While this method takes longer to prepare because it clears out all units from the previous year’s budget to start fresh, it limits discretionary spending that occurs when each department and division receives a set amount annually. Instead, every dollar requested must have a specific use that is approved.
Incremental budgeting allows for long-term planning. A popular method among institutions, it takes into consideration budget allocation of previous years and focuses on disbursement of new revenue only. When budget cuts are needed, incremental budgeting reduces funds across all departments and divisions by a specific percentage.
