Originally Posted by
JasonEvans
I've got a question, who writes/signs the checks? Put another way, do you have the power to not cut a check?
I would handle it this way -- "Hello, Director. Your budget is $2000. $2000 is your budget. You cannot spend more than $2000. Do you understand me? Good, because the moment there is an expense that takes us past $2000, it will not get paid. Period, end of story." And then, the moment something comes in that is over budget, you refuse to pay it. Believe me, the moment that happens folks will figure out a way to still stage the play without the expensive extra items.
I am on the board of a community organization and we had a similar situation. A woman was planning an event for us and she had a detailed budget. She kept going over budget even though we had told her she could not. If there was $300 allocated for plate/silver/glass rentals, she would order something fancier and it would cost $450. We told her that when the budget ran out, she was done. Well, we were a few weeks from the start of the event and she was ordering the alcohol and we said, "nope, you are out of money." She insisted that we could not have the event without a bar. We agreed but said there was no more money left. She was apoplectic but we held firm. So, she quit. We celebrated for a few moments then we called a few of the rental outlets and downgraded what we were renting to get us back under budget so we could order the alcohol. The best part was, we contacted the printer of the program and he agreed to remove her name from the brochures for free because she had been so difficult to work with.
We got our event.
It was fabulous and fun.
It was on budget.
She got to throw a hussy fit and leave our organization.
-Jason "in small, volunteer operations, you either do it within budget or you write a check to cover the budget overruns yourself... there is no other way" Evans