Practicing What We Preach: GFOA Budget Priorities.

• Author: Morrill, Christopher P.
• Position: Government Finance Officers Association

GFOA began a new fiscal year on April 1, and we're implementing a program budget that addresses our core values and strategic priorities, a review of past performance, and a plan for achieving our mission of advancing excellence in government finance. All GFOA services, both internal and external, are now organized by programs that cover expenses, revenues, and service level--or targets that will help us achieve our desired outcomes, which include services for our members. The programs are organized by categories, including:

* Awards

* Certification

* Conference

* Consulting

* Education

* Federal Advocacy

* Relationships

* Research

* Resources

These categories provide GFOA with a diverse revenue mix for funding our operations--because unlike other organizations, we don't get most of our revenue from member dues. Our diverse mix of revenue sources gives us the financial sustainability and freedom to explore new potential programs, maintain cost-effective services, and invest in innovation to support GFOA long-term.

For this year, we've identified two major strategic initiatives to pursue: 1] member engagement, and 2] talent recruitment and retention. Our member engagement goal is to increase members' meaningful and active participation in GFOA. In the past year, approximately 49 percent of members participated in at least one event, but we hope to encourage more of you to join us and engage with our amazing network of members. Our goal for talent recruitment and retention is to make it easier to hire great people in government finance and help them grow. We know how much of a challenge this is for many organizations, and we want to help. Our educational programs provide a good start, and you'll be seeing more research, resources, and advocacy on this topic.

Within our primary service areas and major sources of revenue, we anticipate another strong year for services and continued growth. Highlights from GFOA's major program categories [with the percentage of overall revenue] include:

Education [20 percent]. This year will mark the full return of GFOA's onsite national training. During the pandemic, GFOA has invested in technology in our Chicago office that will allow us to host approximately two training seminars per month in 2023. Courses will feature both core content across all our topic areas and current-event topics. Education also includes GFOA's important role in communicating research, information from our federal advocacy efforts...