Chapter Finances

Creating a Budget: With the knowledge of where your chapter revenue & expenses are coming from, you now will want to create your chapter budget. At the beginning of each year all executive board positions should work with their various chairs to identify their goals for the year and the financial resources it will take to achieve these. Each executive board member will then want to share this with the VP of Finance & President. The VP of Finance & President should work together to review the budget and prioritize where necessary.

Various tools can used to build and track your budget, however, a cost effective and simple tool would be Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Within your budget you will want to track your agreed upon expenses. Additionally, it can be beneficial to project your revenue for the year to compare how that will track against your expenses. 

While your chapter should keep to it's budget as much as possible - inevitably you will encounter expenses that you did not initially plan for. You will want to track these expenses with your budget as you go through the year.

Building an Emergency Fund: An important part to the growth and development of every chapter is establishing a reliable emergency fund. An emergency fund serves as a reserve of money available to your chapter incase of emergencies, cash shortfalls, or if your chapter is experiencing a financial downturn. A good rule of thumb is to allocate a portion of your budget each year to your emergency fund to continually grow your cash reserve. 

A great example of the benefits of an emergency fund can be seen from the COVID-19 lockdowns. As schools shutdown, and campuses limited activities, many PGN chapters new member counts reduced. As a result, the revenue for many chapters decreased as well. While is was not needed by all chapters, those with an emergency fund on hand were able to have peace of mind that they would financially be able to weather the storm and utilize their cash reserves if necessary.