The Fiscal Mapping Process

Transcript

Alex Dopp, Fiscal Mapping Developer and Coach, RAND Corporation

If you work at a behavioral health service agency, you no doubt have worked incredibly hard to fund the high-quality treatments that your agency provides. But what happens down the road? How can agencies plan beyond your current funding to ensure that your programs can continue?

Our team created a tool called the Fiscal Mapping Process that helps service agencies create a plan for this very thing—financial sustainment. This video will help orient you to the tool before you start using it.

The Fiscal Mapping Process involves five steps: One, identify resources needed for an evidence-based treatment program; two, specify funding objectives; three, brainstorm possible financing strategies; four, complete the fiscal map linking financing strategies to objectives; and five, monitor progress.

Marylou Gilbert, Fiscal Mapping Developer and Coach, RAND Corporation

The tool itself is an Excel document that is organized into eight tabs. So, let's take a quick look at how the tool can help you manage each of the five steps. Just keep in mind that although there is an order to the Fiscal Map steps, you’ll probably be moving back and forth among the steps—and the tabs, as well. This will be an iterative process and ongoing, and that’s okay.

First, we have the Overview tab, which provides a brief description plus general tips and instructions. The Program Detail Resources tab includes info on how to choose an evidence-based treatment program and team members for fiscal mapping. The Fiscal Map tab is your workspace for completing the steps which are laid out left to right. Throughout this tab, yellow indicates required fields and the light gray area is for optional notes. Note that as you scroll down, there's also a handy completion checklist and status bar along the bottom of each step, which can help you track your team's progress. The next two tabs have fictional completed examples for treatment programs, followed by three tabs with resources for completing steps one, two, and three.

The examples and some resources focus on parent-child interaction therapy and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. But fiscal mapping can be used with a variety of youth behavioral health treatment models.

Let's look at the PCIT example to see how the tool is filled out. In step one, you specify which resources are needed and the outlook for sustaining each. Next, you write out funding objectives and document factors that help or hinder each objective. This is a very flexible step, but at least three fully described objectives are usually needed. In step three, you select financing strategies that are currently being used and other strategies to be explored with details for each. Step four copies your objectives and strategies from the earlier steps. Your task is to specify what percentage of each objective is covered by each strategy and designate if an objective has been met. Step five provides space for planning next steps. And finally, the budgeting worksheet is an optional section to help detail your program budget. This does require proficiency with Excel formulas.

Alex Dopp, Fiscal Mapping Developer and Coach, RAND Corporation

Now that you've gotten a tour of the tool, take some time to read through all the tabs, the report that details our development process, and our Quick Start guide, which includes a glossary and frequently asked questions. We hope this video inspires you to get started with this Fiscal Mapping Process. Please be in touch to let us know how it goes.