Revised: October 1, 2012

The budget process at Sandhills Community College is a relatively simple one. This is because many important elements of the budget—its overall size, the annual rate of employee compensation, and the nature of the employee benefit package—are determined externally. In large part, the Sandhills budget process is a procedural reaction to the budgets allocated for the College by the North Carolina State Legislature and the Moore and Hoke County Commissioners. While the College makes concerted efforts to affect the size of the budgets it receives from those county sources, those efforts are not part of the internal budgetary process. 

In its budgetary process, the College has at its discretion the allocation of information technology and equipment money; funds for supplies, marketing, printing, travel, etc.; and funds for new positions in times of institutional growth. 

To make allocations in those three areas, the College utilizes a bottom-up process in which requests are generated by faculty members, staff members, divisions, departments, and support offices during regular program reviews and intensive program reviews. Those requests are forwarded to chairs and directors. The chairs and directors discuss these requests at length with the deans/supervisors, who must prioritize them into final recommendations that are presented to the Chief Operating Officer and appropriate Vice President for inclusion in the final fiscal year budget. This determines how allocations will be made campus wide, keeping in mind the College Mission Statement and the Goal statements supporting that Mission. The President responds to the recommendations of the Chief Operating Officer and appropriate Vice President and includes those recommendations in the College Strategic Plan and/or official budget, which is then presented to the College Board of Trustees for approval at its August meeting (or at the first Board meeting following the budget action of the North Carolina Legislature). The College Strategic Plan drives the budgeting process. 

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