Presbyterian College is a private church-supported college located in Clinton, South Carolina. At the time of this work, Presbyterian had a total enrollment of somewhat more than 1100 students in a curriculum that included a deliberate blend of liberal arts, education, and business administration. Because of the tremendous expense of college education and the need to balance enrollment, tuition, development, financial aid, and the scope of the curriculum, some budgeting and planning methodology for simultaneously addressing all of these issues needed to be created.

IMS Quantum was engaged as a part of a development grant to build a preliminary Integrated Planning Model (IPM) to demonstrate such a methodology. In general the IPM included treatments of Development, Physical Plant, Endowment, Administrative Activities, Financial Aid, Finance, Student Life, Enrollment/Retention/Results and Academic Programs.

While each of these areas of the model exhibited varying degrees of sophistication, the development section illustrates the power of the IPM to make explicit a host of variables that ultimately effect success. The Annual Fund Drive included a mail and a telephone campaign. The IPM showed the relationships between the number of solicitations, the response rates, the average gift, the time to make the solicitations, and the cost. These values could then be used in planning to make changes that increase effectiveness.

Another particularly interesting section was the one that covered Financial Aid. This section showed the relationships between the sources of funding, student needs, and the final allocation of funds. A major policy issue concerned the percent of need that the college would attempt to satisfy at different family income levels. Once all the data and relationships were established, the IPM could be used to evaluate any number of financial aid strategies in the context of all the other budget issues.

In general, the Integrated Planning Model was a powerful tool for evaluating a host of different scenarios very quickly. Any administrator involved in the overall budgeting and planning processes of the College could understand the context in which the broad policy issues arose and enter into focused dialogue on the pros and cons of each proposed plan. IMS Quantum is committed to providing sophisticated decision-making and planning tools to meet the needs of administrators seeking success in today's complex educational environment.