It is good practice to monitor your budget every month and compare predicted numbers to the actual figures to look for differences and understand why they occurred. If you are not in line with your projected budget, look at what changed or what could have been controlled. You’ll also want to get a clear idea of your revenue streams to understand where your money is coming from. Forming new connections you can trust takes time and effort – so work on keeping the ones you have as this will help you in the long-term. A thoughtful budget is not restricted to being an operational tool, it’s a statement of accountability, a roadmap for growth, and a catalyst for change. So you must be asking yourself, how do you budget when you do not have the finances to budget in the first place?

Expenses

These one-off, monthly, or yearly donations help give you a consistent revenue source throughout the year. Record a total figure for individual donations here, or split it by category so you can see the year-on-year impact of online donations, text donations, pledges, major gifts, and more. While program revenue often accounts for the majority of nonprofit income, sales are also really common. Here you can include revenue from memberships, products, and other resources that you sell alongside your programs. You might be looking at a nonprofit budget example or template thinking, “This is a lot of work.” Sure, it needs some upfront investment of your time, but it’s totally worth it.

What to include in your nonprofit budget template

For the earlier office supply example, you would add up how many FTEs work in each program area and calculate a formula as a percent of the total number of staff. These calculations may be automated through the accounting system or completed manually. The formulas should be revisited if there are major changes in the way expenses are used, such as staff reassignments or growth of a program. For many organizations the formulas don’t change more than annually.

Program expenses

Today we’re taking you through why you need a budget and helping you create your own using our free nonprofit organization budget template in Google Sheets. Program expenses are the costs that are directly related to running your programs. For ASF, that includes anything related to running the extracurricular programs, including staff and supplies (i.e. soccer balls). The salaries for staff facilitating activities are program expenses.

Advantages of Participating in a Nonprofit Organization or Company

So whatever project your organization’s board of directors is planning to do, it should have a corresponding project budget. A nonprofit budget is more than just a collection of numbers; it’s a strategic blueprint that reflects an organization’s priorities, goals, and mission at a foundational level. It outlines expected income and planned expenses for a specific period, typically a fiscal year, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and transparently.

• His passion for empowering nonprofits and tech expertise have shaped BetterWorld’s mission to make fundraising more accessible and efficient.
• When your nonprofit is new, it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew initially.
• Look no further than these nonprofit budget templates, which are designed to help you plan and track your expenses effectively.
• To help pick out the signal from the noise, we interviewed several seasoned grant professionals.
• They can get the budget through grant proposals sent to funders, having the mission for every good project that they have.
• A key part of running a nonprofit is ensuring you have enough funds to sustain your mission throughout the fiscal year.
• 3 Please note that funds relating to Currencycloud’s services are not FDIC insured or protected by the Visa Zero liability protection policy.

Mark the events in everyone’s calendars, so that it becomes easier to repeat the process each year. Propel Nonprofits is an intermediary organization and federally certified community development financial institution (CDFI). This overview and guide to using the Program Budget and Allocation Template is not intended to be a definitive or comprehensive document for such a complex financial management practice. We hope that you will be able to use this resource to understand the concepts and steps and to implement this valuable process at your nonprofit. When an expense accounting services for nonprofit organizations is clearly and exclusively incurred for a specific program area or cost center, we simply assign the expense to that program area or cost center.

More Templates:

Executive directors should plan and make sure the budget plan is centered around the primary goals and objectives of your organization. Because of this kind of goal, few people would present themselves as donors and offer support, which is mostly in the form of money. These are financial means that are given to organizations with a mission and the success rate worthy of investment. The last method is through the organization’s independent efforts, as their strategic fundraising plans. Through the activities set in the plan, proceeds are acquired, whether through ticket sales, item auctions, or others. Nonprofits can keep tabs on their annual program revenue vs. expenses with this easy-to-use nonprofit program-based budget template.