ABSTRACT
For administrators of nonprofit human service agencies, the 1980s was a decade in which each new fiscal year brought fewer resources than necessary to maintain services at existing levels. A major cause of this problem was declining public revenues, evidenced by the 35% reduction in inflation-adjusted federal spending for social welfare programs in just the two-year span from 1980 to 1982 (Salamon & Abramson, 1982). Also, though charitable contributions grew during the early part of the decade, social service agencies' share of these funds declined (Hodgkinson & Weitzman, 1986). The effect of these changes was to force social work administrators to spend a considerable amount of time and energy on planning, preparing, and, all too often, cutting back their agency's budget.
