Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Tough Start to 2011

2011 is likely to be a very challenging year for Balance and for similar organizations. At the start of the year we received notice that we would be getting a significant reduction in our contracted service rates beginning in February. These reductions amounted to more than 7% of our annual gross income. With these reductions we are required to provide the same level of service to everyone we support. Needless to say, this is a significant challenge. We need to trim more $170,000 from our budget in order to make ends meet.

We are trying to reduce our costs in every way we can while having a minimal impact on those individuals we support and those we employ. More than 80% of our costs as an organization are wages and benefits to all staff members. At this writing we have 77 employees. This is a pretty tall order!

Our other hope is to increase our donations to offset some of these reductions. For 2010 we about broke even thanks to about $50,000 in donations. We will need to increase that a lot in the coming year.