Balancing Dollars & Demand

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Balancing Dollars & Demand

9/1/2007

By Charlene O’Hanlon

Then we're left with a humongous infrastructure we've built that depends upon their money and their resources, and the company leaves us high and dry. Therefore, we depend on our own funding and then the state funding, and other grants and things like that. We think it's a great idea to partner and we do have some very large corporate partners who donate hardware and software. But as an overall business decision, you really can't depend upon that. When and where we can, we handle our own budgetary needs. But, again, we're open to, of course, any collaborative effort, any partnerships that are out there.

Engorn: We'll build our budget on what the college can afford. Then if we end up getting a corporate sponsorship for a specific project, I may be able to buy some additional equipment, services, or software. For example, we had two distance learning rooms donated to us by Verizon. Otherwise, we may not have put them in. But it was all based upon us moving forward with an online distance learning nursing program, so there was a specific need; the vendor stepped up to the plate and put the rooms in. We're doing the same thing with a few other colleges in the area, and businesses that have put up some funds for specific projects. We will then have to incorporate the maintenance of the equipment or the software in the future, but the initial outlay was something that was just an added bonus, which we would gladly take. At the same time, we don't rely on that for our day-to-day, or even five-year plan.

Gatewood: In the past, I created a security operations center that had vendors' [donated] products in there. Yet, when the time came around to renew licenses and do any special professional service work, it was almost six to seven times what it would have cost us to purchase it ourselves. The bottom line is, we are very conscious of the fact that [a company] may have given us something, but somewhere down the road [we know that] somebody's got to pay for it.

Stoner: We have the same mechanism. We'll be more than happy to involve large corporations and such in the beginning of our planning processes. Mostly, though, we try to stay away from bringing in corporations to sponsor software licenses, mostly because of what Stan spoke about. If it's hardware, we're a little bit more willing to speak with them. We'll never say no, but it's much easier from both a budgeting and planning perspective if we're dealing with hardware as opposed to software licensing. Having said that, one of our biggest donors is a major software facility we've entered into a long-term, 10-year contract with. They've been a big player [in their market space], and they'll always remain a big player. But I cross my fingers when I say that; there's a lot of luck and serendipity involved when you deal with large corporations.