4 Ways to Overcome Cuts to Your GR Budget

If you work in public affairs long enough, you’ll face budget pressure. I saw it often

working with smaller business units and start-ups, but also saw it while working at a Fortune 50 company. GR is a long-term play, while leadership is under pressure to show revenue this quarter.

Here’s what I learned about making an impact when resources were thin:

1. Focus on what matters: Budget cuts force clarity. When every dollar counts, you cut the fluff and sharpen priorities. Think of it this way: if a person falls into icy water, the body sends all the blood to the vital organs. The person might lose limbs, but they are still alive. When the GR budget gets cut, your goal is to ensure the function is still alive by "sending blood" to the most important activity.

   
   

2. Innovate through constraint: Big budgets can breed complacency by allowing money to be a surrogate for creative thinking and scrappy problem-solving. We all take the path of least resistance. If there's a large budget, it's easy to throw money at the problem. When there is less money, we must throw ourselves at it. Lean budgets, while not desirable, push you to find creative, often more effective, approaches.

   
   

3. Collaborate to uncover blind spots:  Smaller budgets often require more partnerships and coalitions. Those collaborations often reveal policy or strategic gaps you’d never catch going it alone.

   
   

4. Retool: In lean times, you might need to pick up additional knowledge or skills. I've learned new software (Adobe InDesign, for example) to ensure I could update materials created in that program.

   
   

While no one enjoys budget cuts (except Finance and shareholders), I came to see cuts not as a setback, but as a filter—removing distractions and forcing me to prove value where it mattered most. If your GR budget’s under pressure, focus on these four things to continue to win the day.