0.8 Chapter six: attempting a turnaround, 1988-1992  (Page 13/19)

Knowing that getting onto the city's budget was a long-term project, man­agement focused on raising unrestricted funds through private contributions. In March, Debs formally presented the bridge plan and associated budgets to the board and asked the board "to recognize the scale of the undertaking and the need for full board commitment to the required fundraising effort."

The Society's board and staff were unable to produce the necessary rev­enue to balance the 1990 budget, and the Society incurred a deficit of $1.9 mil­lion. To reassure constituencies that might have been concerned about the deficit, management pointed to the fact that the deficit had been reduced in each of the previous three years and that the Society would have a balanced budget for 1991. Debs noted that intense lobbying was under way with city officials to try to get the city to pay for the Society's energy costs and to get programmatic support, steps that could lead to formal inclusion in the CIG.

By the fall of 1990, both the board and Debs knew that the Society had reached a pivotal point. One of the trustees, Gordon Pattee, called fiscal 1991 "a critical year," and Debs called it a "make-or-break" year. The four major areas of emphasis were the building repairs, the massive collections work, expanding die public programming, and, underlying it all, die major fundraising effort. Par­ticularly important was die need to raise unrestricted operating funds to ease the Society’s impending cash flow crisis. “The extraordinary challenge of the year ahead,” Debs said, “will be dealing with the cash situation.”

The Society was late preparing its 1991 budget and did not present it to the board until September, three months into the fiscal year. James Griffin, the Soci­ety's treasurer, pointed out that the fiscal 1991 budget represented the first time the budget process had been properly managed to include the preparation of a business plan and adequate internal reviews. Griffin also stated that it was the first time the Society had ever generated a cash flow forecast. Still, although processes had been improved and the Society was projecting a balanced budget, meeting that budget would require incredibly high levels of private fundraising. In fiscal 1990, the Society had generated gifts and pledges of approximately $9.2 mil­lion. Though this was an impressive figure, much of it was in the form of multi-year restricted grants. In terms of operating funds, the Society had raised $3.7 million, $2.6 million short of its goal of $6.4 million. For fiscal 1991, the Society established a total operations fundraising goal of $7.8 million, more than twice the amount it had been able to raise in the previous year. Because of the rapidly diminishing cash reserves, Griffin reemphasized that meeting the unrestricted contributions component of the goal was absolutely critical. The goal in the fiscal 1991 budget for unrestricted contributions was $3.9 million, $1.5 million (43 per­cent) more than had been raised in 1990.