Free Nonprofit Budget Templates

She holds a B.S in Psychology and a Master of Public Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. Equipped with organizational goals, financial data, and a uniform template, the team can now build their department budgets. Finance leads should work with team members to project monthly cash-ins and outs to ensure there is enough cash on-hand throughout the year. Even the financially or programmatically smallest nonprofits—often operated entirely with volunteers — have their knowledge of costs spread across two or more people.

Basics of Nonprofit Budgeting: A Beginners Guide

A nonprofit budget is a financial plan that details how a nonprofit organization will raise and spend money. The goal of creating a nonprofit budget is to ensure that the organization https://greatercollinwood.org/main-benefits-of-accounting-services-for-nonprofit-organizations/ has enough money to cover its expenses and reach its financial goals. At the end of the budgeting process, you should have a detailed financial plan outlining the organization’s revenues and expenses.

• This means you’ll want to review your forecasted revenue and expenses against your budget on a regular basis.
• Another step in creating a nonprofit budget is to identify the organization’s major sources of income and expenses.
• Instead, you should reference and re-reference the budget document throughout the year as a financial guide for your organization.
• The template’s operating expenses section allows you to easily determine your rolling cash balance.

Event Planning Budget

The review should include verifying that the budget is able to meet program and organizational goals. Budget planning includes some degree of forecasting and assumptions and boards should thoroughly vet assumptions before finalizing the budget. They should make any final adjustments based on the organization’s goals and its capacity to match income and expenses as closely as possible.

Free Nonprofit Budget Templates

• Include costs for board support, strategic planning, and quality assurance.
• Above all, a budget for non-profit organizations must remain flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining fiscal responsibility.
• Candid templates are highly regarded for their alignment with funder expectations.
• Nonprofits can also forecast their financial position for the upcoming months or years, allowing them to anticipate potential challenges or opportunities.
• Nonprofits are recommended to have general liability (premise), commercial automobile (non-owned/hired), and directors and officers (D&O) liability coverages.

This template should include line items for all of the above expense categories, as well as others that may be specific to your organization. Once all expenses have been accounted for, you can then begin to allocate funds to each category. Budgeting is the process of planning, organizing, and controlling financial resources and how they are allocated to achieve organizational goals. It’s important to budget because it helps the organization manage its funds in a more effective way. This toolkit empowers nonprofits to move beyond basic budgeting and embrace financial management as a strategic driver of mission impact.

A standard rule of thumb is to include a 3-5% bonus and benefits/tax costs at a rate of 25-30% of each employee’s salary. When creating a multi-year budget, account for inflation on each line item and over each year. Calculate monthly costs for line items that are easy to estimate on an annual basis and are relatively consistent. Divide the annual amount by the number of months left in your fiscal year. Here are some tips and tools to help ease the pain of building your next budget.

While there is generally space for hope and dreams in the nonprofit world, when it comes to budgeting – there isn’t. When putting in the numbers for your revenue, make sure you know exactly where your funds will come from. Before starting with what is, essentially, a future-oriented process – clarify the present context. Evaluate current financial health by analyzing the current year-end forecast, current budget variances, and balance sheet strength.

• While it might be less than ideal to underspend when your organization has the capacity to spend more, it’s far worse to overestimate fundraising or grants and end up scrambling to cover costs.
• This is particularly valuable for organizations with limited finance staff.
• We looked at a few organizational budgets, each with variances and different elements.
• If the most you’ve raised is $50,000, don’t put $500,000 down for revenue unless you know EXACTLY where it’s coming from.
• Your expenses will include the costs of running your nonprofit organization; such as salaries, rent, office supplies, and marketing.
• Yes, profit in a charity is perfectly acceptable as long as those profits are used for the nonprofit’s charitable purposes and not for the benefit of the Board or key staff.
• When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.

Below is a list of best practices that nonprofits should consider before starting the budget process. While no two nonprofits are exactly alike, there are some best practices that accounting services for nonprofit organizations all organizations should use when building their annual operating budgets. The term “capital budget” might make you think of capital campaigns—the largest fundraising initiatives nonprofits typically run.