Resource Sharing. Part 4

Finance and administration is tasked with setting and monitoring a project, program or operations budget.  The procurement officer or contractor requests bids for special projects such as building renovations, equipment acquisitions, service contracts, and building repairs. This finance and administration group also tracks hours, compensation and benefits.

A smaller nonprofit may depend on revenue from a large fundraiser such as an auction, but lack sufficient resources to manage the financial aspects.  A resource sharing agreement might be activated to access extra help handling financial transactions and final accounting to reconcile accounts.  

In the case of small business the team communicates with logistics and planning regarding how much money is allocated, and how much is remaining in the budget. They may need to ask a section to cut expenses to prevent cost overruns. If a business needs but cannot financially sustain a salary for a full time procurement officer, a solution might be for three small businesses to fund one part or full time salary. Conversely, one organization may have the funds to support a full time procurement officer, but may benefit from the added compensation a resource sharing agreement might provide if there are seasonal or cyclical downtimes.

Resource Sharing. Part 1

Resource sharing agreements allow businesses or organizations to share personnel to meet a surge. They are typically used in disaster situations, however concepts can be drawn and applied to other situations.  Examples include parking lot attendants, safety personnel, public information officers, kitchen help, a clean-up crew, a graphic artist, an auctioneer or any other applicable resource. A catering business may have a huge order and insufficient staff. This could cause the loss of a large agreement. Instead of losing to another company, set up a resource sharing agreement to call up staff from another catering business to meet the immediate need. The agreement would require the requesting organization to compensate the sending organization for wages and benefits, plus an agreed amount for administrative cost. This same concept may be applied to a floral shop, clinic, accounting firm or any other non-technical company or nonprofit. Churches and other nonprofits may need extra staff to register guests for an event, welcome or help seat guests. Many churches have an abundance and rotate musicians or volunteers where as others may be able to offer a  guest speaker. The second post in this series will address logistics sharing agreements.