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The Fall 2024 charge by President Keller to develop recommendations for a new budgeting model at UNT included efforts and collaboration among students, faculty and staff. This page serves to document our journey to show the steps taken in achieving this goal.

Historic budgeting process and model

Prior to the establishment of a new budgeting process and model, UNT historically used a combination of incremental and centralized budgeting.

Incremental budgeting means budgets are based on the previous year’s funding with only new revenue being allocated each year. This also means that budget cuts, when needed, are typically made as a percentage of the total budget and often implemented across the board. This approach is easy to implement, but can be difficult to determine how expenditures relate to costs, revenues, and institutional priorities since the primary focus is maintaining a stable, steady budget.

Centralized budgeting creates a pool of revenue that allows university leaders to make decisions about distributions of funds. When used in combination with incremental budgeting, this model usually requires relatively few decisions. However, this approach may lead to confusion about how resource allocation decisions are made.

The historic budgeting process flowchartThe Historic Budgeting Timeline Process outlines the key phases in developing the university's budget. The process begins in September, when budgets for the new fiscal year become available. As illustrated in the accompanying image, the bulk of the budgeting activity occurs between February and March, with additional critical steps in May and throughout the summer. Special considerations are made in July and August in advance of the Texas Legislature’s biennial session.

Download a detailed and readable PDF version of the timeline.

flowchart showing the historic budget model of how funds flow to the areas at UNTThe Historic Budgeting Model illustrates how revenue flows through the budgeting process and is allocated. As depicted in the image, certain revenues are earmarked for specific purposes, while the Maintenance & Operations (M&O) base budget is essential for ensuring that university units can cover fundamental expenses. Decisions related to supplemental funding are addressed here, with further details provided in the Budgeting Timeline Process.

Download a detailed and readable PDF version of the budgeting model.

Guiding principles

The new budgeting model and process for the University of North Texas advances the mission, values, and strategic priorities for the university. As we continue this important work, we keep in mind the following guiding principles that were established when the university undertook the initiative to create a new model and process.

Transparency and Prioritization
  • Encourage open communication about available resources, and enable the ability of regular reporting by colleges, schools, and units
  • Align unit-level budgeting with UNT's strategic priorities
  • Ensure relevant stakeholders have access to necessary information and reports
  • Provide budget guidelines and formulas that offer consistent, predictable support
  • Develop an auditing timeline that supports financial integrity
Community-Centered
  • Student Success: Prioritize budget allocations that directly support student success, while also supporting faculty and staff efforts to improve student success
  • Faculty Success: Support and encourage faculty-led research, innovation, and creative contributions
  • Staff Success: Focus the budgeting process to incentivize, strengthen, and support operational effectiveness and efficiency
Strategic Outlook
  • Support strategic forecasting, analysis, and data-driven decision making
  • Strengthen activities aligned with university strategic priorities
  • Provide guidance for current and future goals
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  • Encourage innovation that adds to revenue or improves institutional efficiency and productivity
  • Facilitate mission-specific resource allocation
  • Foster a culture of entrepreneurship and mentorship
Flexibility and Adaptability
  • Provides for adjustments in budget allocations or priorities that are adaptable to new opportunities and challenges
  • Facilitate contingency planning
Collaboration and Partnership
  • Encourage cross-unit and interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Encourage external partnerships that generate revenue or enhance educational and research excellence
Ethical and Responsible Spending
  • Prioritize excellence and enhance reputational areas of significance
  • Consider the social and ethical implications of budget decisions

 

Initial committees

Creating a new budgeting model to advance the mission, values, and strategic priorities for the university required collaboration among students, faculty, and staff. The executive sponsor committee created two committees to contribute to this work: the Technical Committee, which researched best practices and gathered data; and the Steering Committee, which combined feedback from the UNT community with the information provided by the Technical Committee to create a proposal for the new budgeting process and model. Each committee included members from key areas across the university. The Implementation Committee began its work in Spring 2025 to assist with the first application of the new model and process.

Executive sponsors establish priorities, provide general guidance to the committees, consider recommendations and input received from the committees and campus community, and make final decisions about the new budgeting model.

Members
  • Dr. Harrison Keller, President
  • Dr. Mike McPherson, Provost
  • Clayton Gibson, Vice President for Finance and Administration

Community participation

Comments from sessions with students, faculty and staff were grouped into categories to give our community an overview of what was listed as the most important topics at UNT. This feedback has been shared with the Steering Committee to help inform them when choosing a new budget model. This feedback serves as a helpful guide throughout the implementation of the new budget model.

Please note that the meetings below were advertised to specific staff/faculty groups with the caveat that any UNT student, faculty or staff member could attend the session that worked for their schedule. Therefore, each session includes feedback from a variety of campus community members.

Feedback and questions can be directed to the Strategic Budgeting Steering Committee at any time by filling out this form. It has been updated to include the questions that were asked during the discussion group sessions above.