The Composite Financial Index (CFI) is a sophisticated tool designed to help you think strategically about your school's overall financial health and communicate succinctly about it with school leaders. Employed by higher education institutions for decades, the CFI produces a complete picture of your institution's financial strengths and weaknesses in a single score that is based on four underlying core ratios. To develop the CFI, experts with the Big 4 accounting firm KPMG ran longitudinal models on data from over 250 colleges. From this, the team developed a scoring scale, metric scale and weighing scale. NBOA's work with the CFI is the result of an important partnership with the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), in conjunction with CFI co-creator Phil Tahey.
In addition to learning from a variety of curated resources including videos, articles, recorded webinars, case studies and discussion boards, you will establish a national learning community of peers with whom you can continue to explore the concepts discussed in the course and stay connected throughout your independent school careers. This network will be beneficial as you learn:
- The benefits of the CFI and how it can be used to guide strategic conversations and decisions in conjunction with long-range planning.
- How to calculate the index and other tips you need to use the tool effectively.
- How the historic trend of your CFI has been affected by past actions and estimate how your current strategic plan will affect the forecasted CFI.
This course is being offered in partnership between NBOA and One Schoolhouse.
Week 1
Introduction to the Composite Financial Index and the Four Core Ratios
In the first week of the course, you will learn about the genesis and benefits of the Composite Financial Index. You will be introduced to the four core ratios and how they are calculated and used in discussion of the index. Also in this week you will calculate a five-year trend of the core ratios and develop a narrative of the trends and factors/actions the school has taken that are affecting the trends.
Week 2
Calculating the CFI
In the second week of the course you will learn about the strength factors and weighting schema for calculating the CFI and how to calculate your own CFI five-year trend. You will also hear how other schools have used the CFI to reframe their strategic financial conversations, along with learning how the use of debt in the independent school sphere differs from that in higher education and how debt influences the calculation of your CFI. Students will post a summary of their school’s five-year trend and whether it validates or contradicts what you know about your school’s financial health.
Category: Business Acumen
NBOA is recognized by SHRM to offer SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP professional development credits (PDCs). For more information about certification or recertification, please visit www.shrmcertification.org.
NBOA is a recognized provider of recertification credits. HR Certification Institute® pre-approved this program for credits towards aPHR™, PHR®, PHRca®, SPHR®, GPHR®, PHRi™ and SPHRi™ recertification.