Higher education institutions in the United States are entering a new era in budgeting. Therefore, institutions are actively engaging in dialogues about the budgeting tools that will most effectively assist them in achieving institutional goals and objectives within their strategic plans and being accountable for the use of scarce resources, as allocated by State appropriations and/or received through student tuition fees. This paper introduces commonly used budgeting tools for higher education institutions and provides an expanded overview of one specific budgeting tool, responsibility-centred budgeting (RCB). Two public institutions that have adopted the RCB model are compared, and there is an overview of the development of the "Allocation Framework" utilised by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.