"A peacefulness follows
any decision, even the wrong one." -Rita Mae Brown
FINANCIAL ADVICE FROM MONTY PYTHON
This is an excerpt for the article "Surviving Tight Times" by Roger
Neugebauer, in the January 2002 issue of Child Care Information Exhange:
"Neighborhood Child Care Center was broke. Director Jones, assuring everyone
that this was just a temporary shortfall, whipped up enthusiasm for a major fundraising
effort to pay off all the center's debts. Much to everyone's surprise, three months
later Director Jones was again rounding up support for another fundraiser to help
the center over another temporary crisis.
"The reason that Director Jones' solutions failed is that she never grasped
what the real problem was. If she had taken the time to analyze the situation,
she would have found that the center's enrollment had been gradually, yet steadily,
declining over the past six months. To solve the problem, Director Jones needed
to focus her energy on building enrollments, not on organizing one-shot fundraisers.
"....One of my favorite Monty Python skits is "The Changemakers."
In this skit a banker explains their popular new program of providing customers
with $1.05 in change for $1. When asked how the bank could possibly make money
on this arrangement, he replied,'Oh, that's simple -- volume.'
"When your center is running on empty, it is critical to find out why. You
need to know if you are spending $1.05 for every $1 you take in."
For a short time, complete annual back issue sets of Child Care Information
Exchange from 2001, 2000, and 1999 are available at www.ChildCareExchange.com.
Each annual set of six issues includes over 100 articles for directors and teachers.
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