Daily Update - April 8
From: McFadden, David F. <DFMcFadden@manchester.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2020 4:22 PM
To: All Colleagues <AllColleagues@manchester.edu>
Subject: Daily update - April 8
Friends,
The Board of Trustees just concluded a special meeting to hear updates on our work to date and plans for the coming months. I told them that our biggest challenge is the uncertainty of what lies ahead and that our biggest opportunity is to find ways to thrive in that uncertainty. Here is some of what I shared with them:
- We’ve implemented a spending freeze and asked budget officers to identify savings through the end of the year. I’m proud to share that we’ve identified close to $1.0M in savings. Thank you to all who contributed to this work! It’s more than we had asked for and will allow us to hold on to more of our reserves for the months ahead.
- We are freezing most hiring until we can see what our financial situation looks like for next year. This will be very painful, I know, but we don’t want to be adding new employees when we face the possibility of tightening our belts again over the next few months. It would be unfair to them and our current colleagues. That said, there will be a few positions that we fill to support new initiatives that will draw new students.
- We have reduced the scope of our Garver Hall remodeling, saving about $1.0M, a portion of which would have come from our operating budgets over the next couple of years.
- We have applied for a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan funded by recent Federal legislation. The terms are great and, if approved and used appropriately, many be largely forgivable. We are also expecting Federal relief funds that will offset lost revenue and provide direct assistance to our students.
The biggest uncertainty is next Fall’s enrollment. We’re hearing that some prospective students will delay college and some returning students won’t be able to afford to come back. We’re doing everything we can to keep our enrollments up and I want to thank all of you who are on the front lines of that work.
In the days ahead, I will share some of the initiatives we’re planning to find opportunity in this crisis. Each of them builds on the flexibility and creativity we’ve all shown in the past weeks and aim to serve our students in new and different ways.
Be well!
Dave
Dave McFadden
President
Manchester University
260-982-5050