When developing a budget, you want to consider the source of your funding. Budgets can tell your organization, fiscal sponsor or funder more than just the price of proposed good or activities.
Your funder may look at your budget to determine the following
- How transparent you are with salary, administrative cost or any generated income.
- How much impact for activity cost will be gained.
- How comparable is your budget to other like budget proposed or used.
- How you adhere instructions or guidelines of the organization or funder.
Your organization and your funder may have specific guideline or templates that they want you to use for your budget.
For example, if you have federal funding you will be require use GSA (general service administration) rates for per diem, meals & incentives, hotel and mileage for personal vehicles. www.gsa.gov/travel-resources
Your organization or fiscal sponsor may require you to utilize specific line item categories, cost codes or calculations for cost such a benefit and indirect/administrative costs to oversee your budget and provide reports back to your funder.
More Tips:
- Use historical information you have from other program or activities to estimate your costs. That said, remember to consider any lesson you learned from that budget. Did you underestimate hours needed for a consultant? Did you over estimate how many items you would need?
- If you haven’t created a budget before, find a mentor or co-worker who has created one before.
- Once you create your budget, look over it and double check your numbers for accuracy and any items that do not align with your work plan or have been forgotten from your work plan
- Once your budget is finished or approved, remember to continue to measure you progress.