The Value of Peer Groups for Small Colleges & Universities

“I’m so glad to find out I’m not the only one struggling!”

“What a relief to discover I don’t need to recreate the wheel!”

These comments, and many more just like them, are a daily discovery for new members joining peer groups and membership associations—so readily available, but so often underutilized, in this country. Finance and business officers, especially of small institutions, often don’t realize they are dealing with the same issues that most, if not all, other colleges are dealing with. These issues include: 

• Students and parents can’t comprehend how the price they pay for tuition, room and board, won’t cover the actual costs of education. 
• The for-profit world often doesn’t understand or appreciate the challenges that higher education faces. 
• A communication barrier arises when it comes to addressing the bottom line with presidents and boards of trustees.

Among the benefits of belonging to a professional association and actively participating are eliminating isolation and trading secrets of success with colleagues who know the unique challenges of finance and administration at small colleges and universities. It is the sense of community gained from interacting with peers that helps small college members especially understand the role they play in the greater landscape of higher education.

Involvement in a professional association enables small college business officers to find the expertise they cannot afford to hire full-time. Small institutions can often be characterized by limited resources and very few staff to share the workload. Chief business officers often assume responsibility for multiple complex areas, such as risk management, or tax or facilities operations—in addition to accounting and finance—and can’t be an expert in every area they oversee.

Associations are continuously in contact with myriad experts they bring to members in the form of training. Through workshops, training brings opportunities for earning Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits and opportunities for meeting the experts as well as colleagues who have faced similar challenges and have best practices to share. Workshops enable members to give back as well as receive assistance. In fact, many hallway conversations are just as important as the educational sessions themselves. Sometimes a single effort to make personal contact with a fellow CFO returns a resource for a lifetime. 

Membership in a national association or citing its workshop, practice, or presenter often lends credibility to an individual when taking a suggestion to the board of trustees. Boards also realize the benefit of formalized relationships an association provides, like collective buying power, insurance plans or other affinity programs.

For all these reasons, belonging to a professional organization and actively participating brings many rewards. Some benefits to you and your institution are more direct than others, but all of them are important to help eliminate isolation and succeed in your role.

If you’re not yet a member of ABACC, learn more about the benefits today.