The Unrestricted Operating Budget is the financial plan under which the academic and service units of the University operate in fulfilling the instruction, research and public service mission of the University. The University prepares this budget by following a rigorous schedule in order to publish rates and recruiting brochures, package financial aid for new and continuing students, and notify faculty of salary increases in a timely fashion.

The formal budgetary planning cycle for the next fiscal year begins during the summer of each year. The University's Budget Office presents a budget schedule to the Ways and Means Committee for approval. The Ways and Means Committee is chaired by the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. Other members include the Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration, the Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, Senior Vice Provost for Administration, Vice President for Finance, and the Vice President for Health Affairs and Chief Operating Officer of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. Once approved, the Budget Office distributes the schedule to the deans, vice presidents and directors who have responsibility for the development of a budget for their departments ("Budget Managers"). The Budget Office also obtains projections of major sources of income for preparation of preliminary income and expense guidelines, which are provided to the Budget Managers for use in preparing their departmental budgets.

During January, each manager presents budget information to his/her appropriate Executive Vice President. Each Executive Vice President is responsible of distilling the information accumulated and providing an executive summary to the Ways and Means Committee. In addition, the academic deans are also provided with information on the requests from the support units and they provide input to the Provost regarding their needs and priorities from the administrative and support units. Following those presentations, the Ways and Means Committee reviews the requests of the Executive Vice Presidents and arrives at a proposed Unrestricted Operating Budget by establishing priorities for funding the requests from anticipated available resources for the budgetary year.

Once a balanced budget is developed, the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs completes the briefing for the President of the University. Next, the Ways and Means Committee presents its recommended budget to the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees. The Finance Committee reviews the proposed budget and approves it either in the form in which it was presented to the committee or in a revised form agreed to by members of both Committees. The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees approves the budget at its April meeting.

The operating budgets of Emory Healthcare are developed and approved by a similar process. The Ways and Means Committee reviews the budgets in July of each year. After this review, the budgets are presented for approval to the Emory Healthcare Board of Directors, the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Board of Trustees and the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees before final approval is requested at the August meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees.

For questions regarding the budget process, please contact Jerry Lockamy (glockam@emory.edu) at 404.727.5250.