ITHACA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Palisade Corporation, the provider of the world's leading risk and decision analysis software, @RISK and the DecisionTools Suite, announced that Arc of Yates County, New York has used @RISK to create a three-year budget, despite uncertain funding. Arc of Yates, which is funded through a variety of outside sources, provides services to developmentally challenged individuals in Yates County. With the recent economic downturn, the non-profit organization utilized @RISK to forecast where budgetary gaps will exist over the next three years.
“Non-profit organizations such as Arc of Yates rely heavily on fundraising from private and public sources. Reliance on these sources, especially during an economic downturn is a risky proposition. What Palisade has helped us beautifully map are possible funding shortages which can negatively impact the types of programs we offer children and families,” said Stephen Johnson, CFO at Arc of Yates. “Today, we are able to use @RISK graphs to effectively communicate to our senior leadership team and board of directors where potential shortages are. Palisade’s software has become invaluable for our organization.”
As a non-profit organization, Arc of Yates primarily relies on funding from state and local governments. Those funding streams are impacted by state and local budget deficits, early retirements of knowledgeable government workers who are not being replaced, inconsistent and capricious rate-setting methodologies and heightened government audit protocols. @RISK works by providing a range of probability distributions to represent uncertain variables, and then computing hundreds or thousands of different scenarios. A probability distribution is a range of values with greater probability of certain values occurring than others. The normal distribution, or “bell curve,” is a common example. The values around the center – or mean – of the distribution are more likely to occur than the values at the ends or tails.
“The greatest benefit to the Arc of Yates has been in reducing a number of significant uncertainties down to a single output that provides our senior leadership and board of directors with a realistic expected outcome,” said Johnson. “Comparing the two out-lying years in our three-year strategic financial plan has also provided advance warning that the next two years will be financially challenging. As a result, we have re-prioritized capital projects for 2011-2013 and will need to work more collaboratively.”
About Arc of Yates
Arc of Yates is a non-profit organization for people with developmental disabilities. It provides a wide range of community-based services, including service coordination, residential living, clinical services, employment opportunities and industrial and educational development throughout Yates County in upstate New York.
About Palisade
Palisade Corporation is a software developer that produces decision support tools for professionals in many lines of work. The company was founded in 1984, and at present more than 400,000 people use Palisade’s software in fields that range from finance to oil and mineral exploration, real estate to heavy manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals to aerospace. Its software is used by many Fortune 500 companies, including Shell Oil, Procter & Gamble, ExxonMobil, Chase Manhattan, and by prominent economic and financial consultants.