Our budget

Yesterday I met with Ana María Soler, from the Dean of Development Office, and she was helping me with the Project's budget.  Since we still do not have a Grant Manager,  administrative tasks have taken a lot of my time, and have gone slower than they should have.  When the Grant Manager comes, he/she will have the following tasks,  according to my meeting with Ana María:

1. Revise the budget to meet the actual grant received versus the proposed amounts.  For years one and two we were granted less than we proposed, although not significantly so.  
2. Identifying any surplus from budget items to compensate for the 3% increase in USC salaries beginning January 2011.
3. Budget transfers from year two to one: 
1. several options for the student monitoring suite are being evaluated (see Benjamín's post).  we do not want to acquire the one on the budget, with a total cost of 415,000 for the 5 years of the Project.  This solution is a software instead of web-based, and its cost will make it difficult to institutionalize when the grant is over. 
2. a cost-effective alternative would be to acquire, not a suite, but only the monitoring system.  The coaching team (Financial and Life) would cooperate with faculty to produce the experiences, that correspond to the health and wellness modules we originally intended to buy.  
3. a local developer can be contracted to produce a website similar to the portal proposed by one of the suite's prospective vendors, and our programmer analyst could be webmaster.  The site could be hosted by us or by the developing company. 
4. Possible uses for the resulting monies:  
1. we want to expand three of the Project's objectives (2, 3 and 4, to give services to students with disabilities.