Hi Tom: Sounds like you may be heading for the horns of a dilemma. I say this because your post reminds me of two cardinal rules in business/strategic planning. 1. The budget is not the plan. 2. The numbers from another place can't be substituted for your own. If you are interested in comparing your market research numbers with the actual numbers from other institutions, be very careful. This can be a helpful exercise only if the numbers you are using for the comparison are from "look alike" institutions that are similarly situated geographically and demographically (and even psychographically). A good resource for finding such locations is a book called the "Places Rated Almanac" (Savageau & Boyer, c1993). A local reference that may be of some help is the book, "Open to the Public: A guide to the museums of Northern California" (Akers, c1994). If you have no numbers to work with in developing your budget, then you may be putting a cart before the horse. The numbers you are looking for should be the product of site-specific market and economic research. Such information will allow you to contruct your various income scenarios. In the meantime, your expense numbers will tell you what level of operation is required to breakeven. From this, you can develop a preliminary set of stats that can serve as place holders until the hard data comes in. Also, there are equations that you can use to construct a preliminary set of numbers. For example, I assume you will be operating as a 501(c)(3). If so, forget being a self-supporting institution. You'll be dependent on a mix of earned income and contributed support (The ASTC published an excellent article on this subject back in 1993.) What that mix is is dependent on whether your focus is on serving the local population or the out-of-area visitor. The former indicates an orientation toward children. The latter indicates an adult-orientation. If you are children-oriented, then admission will be relatively low cost and membership with be of relatively low value. Your revenue mix will be more heavily weighted on the support side of the scale. A place to start is to shoot for a 40/60% split (earned income/contributed support). It may actually come in at 30/70% but it should not be anymore out of balance than that. If you are an adult oriented institution, the numbers are reversed. So, if you need a million $ to breakeven and you are children/locally-oriented, then you need $400k from earned income and $600k from contributed support. Use the IMS/GOS financial reporting worksheets to construct a breakeven budget. Assume, for example, that the $400k earned income objective will be divided evenly between admission, membership, sales & fundraisers. With $100k assigned to the membership category, you can begin developing a sense for the level of support you will need from the local community. Go through the same exercise for the $600k you need from contributed support. Begin by dividing the objective evenly amongst the various budget categories (fed. grants, individual contr., foundations, corporations, etc.). As you are working on the hypotheticals, hopefully the market and economic research you are conducting will provide real numbers that will make your day. I strongly recommend you include objective and unbiased focus group testing as a part of your market research. Also, develop at least three planning scenarios: 1)breakeven, the minimum level of operation necessary in order to keep the doors open; 2)zero-based, the optimum level of operation necessary in order to meet the objectives of the first-year plan; 3) nirvana-based, the ideal level of operation necessary in order to meet the goals and objectives of a 3-year business plan. Lastly, remember to factor in retention rates when you are contructing your plans for subsequent years. For contributed support, figure 70-80% (in other words, a 10% increase over the previous year actually requires 20-30% new money). When it comes to membership, figure 60% as your retention rate. That means if you want to increase memberships from 1000 to 1100, then you have to come up with 500 new members, not 100. If you rely on telemarketing as an integral part of your membership campaign...two things, don't but if you do, the retention rate on membership will drop to below 50% so your volume is going to have to start and stay very high (here's where the size of your name universe will help to determine if your membership expectations are reasonable). Hope this epistle helps. Us development-types have this stuff coursing through our veins. DITDITDITDA\/DITDITDITDA\/DITDITDITDA\/DITDITDITDA\/DITDITDITDA\/DITDITDITDA\ Rich Jones CAUSE AN EFFECT: Q: What's better than implementing Nonprofit & Institution Development a perfect plan tomorrow? Redding, California 96001 A: Implementing a good plan today! Phone/fax: 916-275-9261