Since this is such an important document for accountability purposes, the layout should be easy-to-navigate, and the relevant applicable formulas should be as accurate as possible. To learn more about taking control of your nonprofit’s finances, watch our free video, Seven Lessons Learned from Nonprofit Leaders. The “Fuzzy Math” section includes tips about better bookkeeping and financial transparency. According to Statista, the United States has 1.56 million non-profit organizations as of 2015. For templates exclusively in Microsoft Excel formats, check out our collection of Excel Budget templates.
- Remember a budget describes your project in numbers just as your proposal describes it in words.
- Revenue can be one of the more difficult parts of developing a budget – simply because it’s harder to forecast than expenses.
- In recent years, charitable giving from individuals has skyrocketed to a remarkable $500B per year.
- This alignment helps ensure your spending directly supports your mission and strategic objectives.
- Some of these costs might be small, but it’s important to keep track of them.
- A non-profit organization that is not able to budget properly will not be able to conduct any kind of operations.
- Evaluate current financial health by analyzing the current year-end forecast, current budget variances, and balance sheet strength.
Step 6: Update the Budget
Don’t forget to track restricted and unrestricted funds, and how you are spending them. For example, if you tell your donors that all donations will go directly to program expenses, those are then restricted funds that you need to exclusively use to support programs. Operating budgets reflects the organization’s planned financial activities for the year ahead, showing how much revenue it expects from which sources and how much it will spend on operations.
Appeal Income
This includes estimating the amount of money you expect to receive from donations, grants, fundraising events, and investments. Keep monthly and quarterly tabs on your nonprofit’s cash flow with this all-inclusive, customizable template. Pre-filled income sources — such as grants, donations, etc. — enable you to track monthly and quarterly income actuals. A budget is a guide that can help a nonprofit plan for the future as well as assess its current financial health. It is good practice to periodically review the budget as well as compare it to the actual cash flow and expenses, to determine whether they are playing out as expected during the course of the year.
- Startups will be easier to run if you have the right printable plan set in place to run it perfectly.
- Looking to create a well-crafted budget for your nonprofit organization?
- For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus primarily on operating budgets because of their central role in nonprofit finance.
- View a wider selection of project budget estimate templates right here.
- Take note that the amount of your financial resources must be the latest.
True Program Costs: Program Budget and Allocation Template and Resource
If you’re hosting several fundraising events or focusing on a large campaign, create a separate budget for these ventures. Keep your main organizational or operational budget focused on your operations. Then, detail your expenses across program, administrative, and fundraising categories. It’s time to The Key Benefits of Accounting Services for Nonprofit Organizations forecast your nonprofit’s income for the upcoming period.
Often funders will look at the budget component of your proposal before they read anything else. To help you through the budgeting process we’ll walk you through every line item you might need to include and show you how to create your own nonprofit organization budget template. This nonprofit budget example caters to nonprofits who need to send cash flow projections and budgets to funding organizations in order to secure grant monies. Considering how important the role of nonprofit organizations are in the society, it is just right to secure their planned undertakings.
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. At this point you will have a subtotal of the direct costs of each program, administration, and fundraising. Generally speaking, there are two ways to organize expenses in your nonprofit’s operating budget. Although considering natural expenses is helpful during the planning process, your final budget should use functional expense categorization to match your financial reports. If your nonprofit has the financial flexibility to budget for a revenue surplus, do so!
Once adopted, the operating budget also becomes an essential financial management tool helpful in monitoring ongoing operations and organizational activities throughout the year. With each reporting period, the organization compares actual performance against its plan. Creating a budget for your nonprofit organization is an important step in ensuring your financial success.
Non-Profit Budget Templates
This non-profit board structure chart comes in PowerPoint and PDF formats. It’s a perfect slide to use to provide a visual of your nonprofit’s Board of Directors. You can easily copy it into an annual report presentation and update it as your board changes. This free nonprofit and free NGO templates download is especially helpful for new organizations just starting out to get a jump start on their board structure.