As I was finishing my paper for this course (since I have another I am working on too!), and writing the budget for my program, something else that became very clear to me was upfront costs versus ongoing costs. My program represents an expansion in an organization's (the Grant Professionals Association, a member organization for grant writer people like me) already existing DE, which would require significant development--up front costs. I was thinking about how I would justify this initial investment to my organization and so found myself budgeting out a couple years in the future. With the right tuition model, it seemed that the GPA could break even after 2 years and finally bring some real revenue in after 3 years. I wonder if many nonprofit organizations or even companies would be willing to get involved in that kind of investment. Of course I am advocating for it, but I just wonder what the real response would be.
This relates, it seems to me, to my post below about my grant submission for the Virtual Oncology Practice. As I said, the budget was about $675K and half was for the tech part. Funders are always looking at cost per learner. So if we have 2000 people complete the activity, then that amounts to $337.50 per person over the year--not too bad.
And while we are seeking grant support to get the project going, we are also seeing it as an investment. So if this request goes through and we get to do this project in 2011, then in 2012 we can get support to expand into more content areas. This would result in a lower budget, since the tech is built and would only need to be updated/expanded (but not started from scratch all over again). This might result in a budget of only $350K and with 2000 learners that's $175 per person. So over time the cost per person goes down, but that is only possible with the investment up front.
Organizations have to be willing to make the investment and take the time that goes into reducing costs and ultimately, eventually (hopefully!) result in cost savings. I think it's important, but hard.
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