During FYE 2024, we presented an operating budget of a loss of $365K. We had also presented a capital budget showing expenditures of $387K. Of this $387K, $366K was for implementation of a new technology platform.

We ended FYE 2024 with an operating profit of almost $100K, representing a $465K positive variance to plan. We also have gains from our investment portfolio, which totaled $527K. The result is a $627K gain in unrestricted net assets.

Some of the large variances came from the following areas:

• Certification had more applications and exams taken than were budgeted for, resulting in a positive revenue gain.
• CFMA’s 2023 Annual Conference had higher than planned numbers in registrations, sponsorships, and exhibition sales, resulting in a positive variance. In addition, the AGC/CFMA Conference had better results than budgeted.
• CFMA’s Education Department’s two new Certificate Programs in Human Resources and Risk Management were much more well attended than budgeted, leading to positive variance.
• Marketing variances are a result of some salary allocation changes due to staffing changes at HQ and from not upgrading the website as budgeted due to the delay in the technology evaluation.
• Membership revenue was up due to the increase in new members over budgeted growth.
• Support Services showed a negative variance due to a number of factors. The major ones are from staff changes in senior roles at HQ that led to a realignment of staffing allocations based on new roles and personnel. There were also some new staffing hires beyond the replacement of departing vice presidents. A couple of support staff moved from part-time to full-time, and a Staff Accountant was hired to help support the Vice President of Finance & Shared Services. We also had a larger than planned rent CAM adjustment for our HQ office space. Finally, there was $51K in technology expenses from the capital expenditure budget for FYE 2024 that we decided to expense vs. capitalize.

FYE 2024 Capital Variance

The upcoming budget for FYE 2025 shows that most of the technology evolution capital expenditures and duplicate costs for running two systems have moved out one year from FYE 2024 to FYE 2025.

After thorough review and much discussion with HQ and the Officers, the decision was made to refocus our efforts on upgrading the existing ACGI system vs. going with Nimble, which caused some significant changes to the capital budget for FYE 2024. The new direction resulted in approximately $259K less in capital budget spent in FYE 2024 that will roll into the FYE 2025 capital budget.

Some discovery costs were incurred to create the business requirement documents along with purchasing software for the new learning management system to be implemented this coming year. As mentioned previously, $51K of those discovery costs that were part of the $107K in capital spent this year were expensed in FYE 2024.

There was also a small amount in the capital budget for laptops and equipment that was expensed as opposed to capitalized and $12.5K for test development that wasn’t spent.

Net Assets

With the positive operating results and our investment portfolio gains, our net assets increased at the fiscal year-end to just over $6M.

Conclusion

I would like to thank the members of CFMA’s Finance Committee and the Investment and Audit Subcommittees 
for their time and effort.

I would also like to thank CFMA’s 2023-24 Treasurer, Caryl Coronis, for her support and Stacey Scholl, CFMA’s Vice President of Finance & Shared Services, for all of her work to provide accurate and relevant information.

I look forward to the upcoming year and working with CFMA’s 2024-25 Treasurer, John Moran. 

Copyright © 2024 by the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA). All rights reserved. This article first appeared in July/August 2024 CFMA Building Profits magazine.