Tear Down the Silos!

“Nothing,” she replied, “because I didn’t have any more budget for envelopes.”

I actually thought she was kidding. No such luck.

I sputtered and stammered and asked the audience if it could help explain to her that if she was netting positive revenue from each effort, she could just take the money from the proceeds to pay for the reply envelopes. The entire room stared back at me as if I had two heads and agreed with the chapter CEO. There is a revenue budget and a separate expense budget. Even if something generates an extra million bucks, staffers can’t use any of those newly found dollars to roll it out to raise more, unless they have enough in their separate, preapproved expense budget.