Non Profit Budget Template

If you manage a nonprofit organization without keeping track of your monthly revenue sources and costs, you'll experience a similar problem of either spending too much or not enough on important items. 

However, with careful planning, you may concentrate on your nonprofit's financial objective. Also, you'll be able to run your business more effectively with the minimal funding you get.

The best free nonprofit budgeting templates for businesses, startups, and other nonprofit groups can be found in this post. Additionally, you'll discover the crucial components of budgeting for your organization.

What is a Budget?

A budget is the organization's plan in financial terms. In order to fulfill your objective and maintain sustainability and accountability to your stakeholders, it is imperative that resources are used in a planned and inclusive budget process. 

You can get started with the aid of the resources and advice on this page.

Establish Your Budget

The nonprofit budget template, which is a layout for budgeting costs and income by activity area, is the accounting department's main tool for creating an institution-wide budget.

With a customizable platform created to meet the requirements of your team and adjust as those needs evolve, you can encourage your employees to exceed their expectations.

Tips For Creating Budgets at Nonprofit Organizations

In order to forecast how much funds you will raise compared to how much funds you will spend over the year, you must crunch statistics until you start to become cross-eyed. Of course, this estimate is one that you hope your committee will approve. 

The process of creating a budget is laborious and time-consuming for the majority of firms, and many executives dread it every year. The process may be streamlined to make it simpler, easier, and more precise by taking into account the following tactics.

To make creating your next budget less painful, consider the following advice and resources:

Use a template, first.

Start with a broad template that lists your primary sources of income and includes standard spending categories like staff costs (salaries, bonuses, benefits), office costs (copying, rent, supplies, utilities), trip costs (flights, accomodation, meals), etc. 

Starting with all of these will offer you an excellent place to start, but as you expand your budget more, you may add more specifics to the items listed.

Limit the number of items listed.

Avoid making them overly descriptive or adding so many other line items. This can make your budget too intricate and drawn-out, and it will limit your ability to allocate money and expenses over the year.

Monthly spending plan.

Use a model that enables you to allocate funds for your activities monthly rather than on a yearly basis. 

This enables you to precisely analyze your monthly progress and anticipate any realignments that could be necessary sooner, allowing you to reallocate finances or make plans to generate more money as necessary. 

Additionally, breaking down the exact activities that will take place each month into smaller time frames makes it easier to account for special events, one-time expenses, etc.

Calculate a yearly total. 

Include a total yearly column to which you may add each monthly estimate to determine your year-to-date budget. 

As the fiscal year progresses, having both the overall and month-to-date views will enable you to assess your progress in relation to the overall objective.

Take inflation into account. 

As a starting point, use the results from the previous year. Be remember to factor in the next year's inflation, which is about 3%. 

When drafting a multi-year budget, take each line item's average annual inflation into consideration.

Prioritize your fixed and essential expenses. 

Start with the fixed expenses you must pay for things you know you will incur regardless of the level of activity, like rent, utilities, wages, and insurance, and then add in the variable expenses. 

Prepare a list of the "nice to haves" that you may include in your budget if you anticipate having extra money after paying all required bills.

Separate annual expenses into months. 

Divide the yearly total by the number of months remaining in your fiscal year to determine the monthly bill for line items that are simple to calculate on a yearly basis and are generally consistent.

Take into account timing irregularities. 

Take into account the seasonality and timing of when income and spending may change, such as for special occasions, yearly fundraising campaigns, sizable presents, etc. 

Identify the months that can bring in more income or incur more costs so that you can make plans to pay specific expenses if you have the money or set aside enough money to meet those expenses later.

Make use of pre-filled templates. 

To assist in developing estimates for categories where revenue or costs are predictable and recurrent, such as trips or revenue estimates, provide tools like generic templates. 

To rapidly determine travel expenditures throughout the year, for instance, assign an approximate value for flights, hotel stays, per diem for meals, taxis/transportation, etc.

From known expenses, calculate the dependent items listed. 

Budget for other associated projections, including human expenses, using known figures. By entering each employee's basic salary for the entire year and figuring bonuses, benefits, taxes, and other expenses as a fraction of the known income, you may make a thorough personnel column for your budget. 

A general guideline is to add a 3 to 5 percent bonus and 20 to 30 percent of each staff's income toward benefits and tax charges.

Note:

Although developing an organizational budget usually requires time and careful consideration, maybe these tips will help your team have a more fruitful experience. 

To contribute the essential specifics and correct information to your budget, keep in mind to incorporate important leadership from your firm.

Free Non Profit Budget Template 

We have several free nonprofit budget templates that your organization must use to go from disorganized financial management to operational budgeting.

Nonprofit Program Budget Template

Using this simple form, you can keep track of the project-specific budget for your organization. 

To calculate monthly total income, identify sources of income and related amounts in monthly columns. To compare total costs to total income, enter project expenses/costs in identical month-by-month columns.

Use this charity project budget template to identify areas where you can expand and those where you might need to make cuts.

Nonprofit Annual Budget Template

To assist you with managing your organization's budget, use this simple sample yearly nonprofit budget layout with sample texts.

You may replace sample financial data, including income and spending data, with your own using editable fields. The template then calculates the year's total until that point.

This completely editable template assists you in calculating your company's monthly, quarterly, and annual net income so that you may assess the viability of the activities that are allocated for your nonprofit.

What Should Be Included in a Nonprofit Budget?

The budget for a nonprofit should cover a wide range of expenses, from daily operating expenses to monthly donations. We'll concentrate on the main sources of revenue and costs.

Nonprofits depend on a variety of funding sources, including contributions from people, foundations, businesses, and grants. Include the following forms of income in your accounting to broaden your income stream:

Grants: Both the government and businesses like Google offer grants to nonprofit organizations. Indicate the types of projects that each grant will support in the budget.

General Donations: The heart of nonprofit organizations is financial support from significant contributors and a larger donor base. Look at prior years' budgets to get an idea of how much you might anticipate to generate from general donations.

Giving on a regular basis: Recurring donations are a dependable source of funding for your organization. Record monthly, bimonthly, and annual contributions.

Donations in kind: this includes any offered services or materials.

Corporate Giving: Nonprofits rely on corporate donations to grow their clientele and forge new connections. To increase your donations even more, think about collaborating with an expert in matching gifts.

The easiest approach to evaluating your investment in every promotion or project in relation to its proportional relevance in your strategy is through projections. 

There is no way around estimating your costs because it is a key component of your decision-making. In your strategy, account for the following expenses:

Managerial or Administrative: This refers to costs associated with administration and operations, such as those related to technology, office space, utilities, and staff pay.

Programming: These are the expenses required to carry out your purpose-related tasks, according to programming. For instance, if a nonprofit is committed to feeding the homeless, groceries and expenditures associated with meal preparation would be included in program expenses.

Fundraising: Campaigns to solicit donations are referred to as fundraising, and they may involve marketing initiatives like newsletters, print advertisements, and blog postings.

Now that you have a general idea of what your nonprofit's budget will cover, let's concentrate on allocating money specifically for communications and marketing.

How Much do Nonprofits Spend on Marketing?

According to a recent survey, organizations spent over 70% of their advertising expenditures on generating leads and new contributor acquisition in the past year, spending an average of $4 on digital marketing for every $1 in online donations. 

Planning a budget for such marketing expenses is essential. Your marketing budget acts as a road map to help you achieve your objectives and assess the viability of your strategies.

In the realm of for-profit businesses, it's common practice to allocate 10–20% of anticipated gross profits on communications and marketing. As a general guideline, attempt to devote 5–15% of your resources on marketing if you work in the charity sector.

The most crucial thing is that you create a thorough communications and marketing budget at the beginning of each fiscal year. As you continue, keep track of expenditures and outcomes so you can compare costs and benefits. 

Your yearly communications and marketing plan should include a budget, with a dollar amount given to each tactic (email, media relations, direct mail, paid advertising, etc.), each of which needs to be properly broken down (evaluation, postage, printing, consulting, etc.).

Final Thoughts

With the support of the template, your team can be more productive and complete more work by making it simple to plan, collect, supervise, and report on work from anywhere. 

With roll-up reports, advanced analytics, and automated systems created to keep your workforce connected and informed, you can report on critical metrics and gain real-time insight into work as it is being done.

There is no telling how much additional work teams can complete in the same time frame when there is clarity on the task being done.

Additionally, for a nonprofit organization to increase productivity, profitability, and accuracy, they may need to utilize resources like a nonprofit property management system.

Systems like this help nonprofit organization founders and managers automate their managerial/operational tasks.

To learn more about the Booking Ninjas nonprofit property management system, schedule a free call with us right now.