Economic Justification Toolkit

SHCA offers you all the materials you need in order to gain funding for your attendance at the SHCA Annual Conference in one easy location. With expert advice, pre-conference justification documents and post-conference reporting templates, your manager or supervisor is sure to appreciate the investment made in your training and development as well as to your organization’s success. Click the links below to download these valuable customizable justification documents.

Customizable Letter to a Manager

Customize this letter and provide your manager with a detailed explanation of the education you'll receive at the SHCA Annual Conference.

By customizing the letter to fit your organization, it is best to include details that will:

Explain the purpose of the conference and how it aligns with individual performance goals
Articulate potential takeaways, actionable objectives, and measurable outcomes
Show that the payback of attendance outweighs the cost of attendance

ROI (Return on Investment)

How much would it cost for you not to attend a SHCA Conference? Learn how to justify your professional development costs and how you could actually save money through your conference attendance.

The benefits and expense worksheets help you demonstrate that by attending the conference you are actually saving money for your organization. You have the opportunity to itemize the estimated total cost of attending the conference and the time spent at all conference activities. By completing the worksheets you should be able to answer questions like:

What sessions provided information that could be used immediately to benefit my organization?
What workshops taught a special skill and/or help to overcome current or future challenges?
Why was the conversation at the informal networking events important and who gave the best idea? Was it a member, speaker, vendor?
What exhibiting vendors might save my organization money and time?
How will the tools, technologies, and processes presented by the subject-matter experts impact our day-to-day work?

Although you might understand the benefits of the conference that interests you, your manager may not. Therefore, to be most effective in justifying the conference, you need to clearly articulate the connection between your organization’s knowledge requirements and the conference program. Do not assume that your manager will be able to automatically make those distinctions.

Sample Conference Report

The SHCA Conference, like any other expenditure, requires clear proof that the company will benefit from an outstanding return on investment when attending these conferences. One technique that is used by a number of attendees is the use of a conference report. A conference report shares information about the conference to people who did not attend the conference.