Cost-Benefit Analysis: Tools for Decision Making

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If you are like most child care center directors, you have a healthy respect for your center's bottom line. At minimum, you want to be assured that inflows, revenues that you derive from fees, grants, contracts, and other income-generating activities, is equal to your outflows, your expenses that enable you to remain in the black. But, there may be a time that your inflows do not exceed your outflows, and you find yourself involuntarily dipping into savings, drawing on your line of credit, or cutting costs that may affect program quality.


Even if your agency is not spewing red ink, you are still wise to continuously assess the cost-effectiveness of your programs. As an administrator, you have likely made decisions based on your intuitive criteria of cost-efficiency, choosing among alternative approaches that are least costly, and yet provide high quality child care services. Have you, however, put pen to paper to consider ...