A call for ideas: Driving revenue growth for our future
Dear colleagues,
As we continue into the spring semester and navigate uncertainties taking place nationally, focusing on strategic finance is more essential than ever to ensure we achieve our mission. As you know, student tuition and fees make up our largest revenue stream, and while private support for NAU’s mission is at an all-time high, state support remains fragile and federal sources of revenue are increasingly volatile.
Given this reality, the onus is on NAU to adapt and innovate. If we are to not just continue our work but also grow our impact as a force for good in Arizona and beyond, we must develop and implement new approaches to revenue generation that can, in turn, be reinvested into our students, our dedicated faculty and staff, and our mission.
I am confident we will deliver on this dimension of strategic finance and in so doing propel forward our university’s unwavering commitment to student success and people-first values—together.
Our strategic finance priorities
Given the substantial changes in the higher education landscape since we first introduced the year of strategic finance, it is worth repeating the areas of emphasis that must be embedded throughout our work:
- Sharpening our focus: Concentrating efforts on areas that are aligned with our vision.
- Investing in impact: Ensuring that we dedicate our time toward impactful work that leads to mission aligned outcomes—and being cognizant that sunsetting other efforts may be necessary to best deploy our time and resources on behalf of NAU.
- Raising revenue: Expanding and diversifying how we fund our work, building institutional resilience and allowing for sustained and meaningful reinvestment in our students, faculty, staff, and infrastructure.
- Cost containment: Streamlining and reducing expenses wherever possible to ensure that we can invest the maximum in areas aligned with our core values: students and employees.
As I shared on Monday, the culmination of this work will be the development of a five-year budget forecast, which will chart the course for the future and inform proactive and strategic decision-making that is adaptable to our operating context. I look forward to sharing the results of this effort by May 1 and to collaborating on the work ahead.
An invitation to share ideas
Today, to complement these efforts, we are launching a 30-day universitywide call for revenue generating ideas to accelerate efforts that will diversify and enhance our ability to raise revenues over the long-term. Everyone is invited to participate, multiple ideas are welcome, and no idea is too big or small—submission is simple and will only take a few minutes. The survey is open through March 14
Our leadership team has already begun thinking about opportunities, including expanding campus space rentals, developing new programs, and providing shared services that offer mutual benefit to NAU’s regional and statewide partners. I look forward to broadening the avenues for input and to your ideas to innovate and optimize revenue generating potential across our university’s operations.
Ideas will be reviewed by the University Budget Advisory Board in March, with feasibility assessment, expert consultation, and implementation strategies to follow.
Moving forward together
Our university’s ability to generate and sustain revenue is not merely a financial matter. It is vital to thriving in our operational reality and delivering on our promise of access and success for our students, investments in our faculty and staff, and lasting contributions to the health, vitality, and prosperity of our communities in Arizona and beyond.
By thinking boldly, acting strategically, and continuing to optimize across all our strategic finance dimensions, each of us can help build the NAU of tomorrow—a university that is truly among the nation’s preeminent engines of opportunity, with students at the core of all that we do.
Thank you for your dedication to our shared mission. I look forward to ideas that will increase our resilience and support our continued excellence.
In partnership,
José Luis Cruz Rivera
President