Creating a Capital Plan: Success Requires More than a Strong Financial Mode

Josh Keniston - Dartmouth College
Whitney Henry - Dartmouth College

After many years of managing capital projects on a yearly basis that aligned with the annual budget process, Dartmouth pivoted to create a longer-term and strategic 5-Year Capital Plan. The shift to longer range planning required teams to work together in new ways and to adopt a more integrated form of planning. Creating and maintaining strong financial models was the easiest part of the process, the most difficult work was in creating and instituting new oversight structures to manage capital accountability and cross-functional coordination among finance, facilities, advancement, and academic leadership from across the institution. The process has allowed Dartmouth to better deploy our resources and to advance institutional priorities more quickly. Learn how Dartmouth managed and implemented new oversight and collaboration structures along with robust financial models to support its new 5-Year Capital Plan. Using Dartmouth as a case study, this session will have a facilitated discussion with attendees and use interactive polls to explore how others have transformed their capital budget process and share lessons learned for a successful transition.

Learning Objectives

  1. Define critical components for creating a new capital plan.
  2. Identify challenges of instituting new capital planning processes.
  3. Develop new oversight structures to manage capital accountability for cross-functional coordination across an institution.

CPE Available

  • 1 Credit: Finance