Resource Management:

Financial Planning

Well-managed volunteer programs encourage positive service experience and a higher volunteer retention rate. Careful budgeting is a vital component of volunteer programs and service activities. Consider these tips on creating a program or project budget.

Budgeting isn’t always easy, but it’s vital to the successful management of a volunteer program. With the proper tools, budgeting can be a quick, easy, and painless process. Prior to beginning or expanding a volunteer program/project, budget your monies wisely. Start out by separating your volunteer budget from any other budgets that may affect you (for example, departmental budgets, national service program budgets, etc.). Take the necessary steps to accurately prepare your budget and document all income and expenses that will affect the program/project.

There are five basic steps to preparing a budget:

1. Assess your needs.
   Determine what funding you may need and/or what monies you have to spend for your program/project.

2. Determine your resources.
   From prior planning, you know what resources you could use to help you achieve your goals. These resources include individuals, associations, institutions, physical space, and/or any materials/supplies/services that you need. Make sure to document all resources and their financial worth.

3. Recognize what you have.
   This includes money from grants, donations from individuals, in-kind donations, etc.

4. Create categories.
   Separate costs by applicable category (e.g., supplies, foods/beverages, printed goods, communication costs, volunteer recognition items, etc.).

5. Establish targets.
   Establish targets for income and expenses and try to adhere to those targets. You may need to reallocate existing resources or raise additional funds if the need is greater than currently available
   resources.

To manage your expenses, analyze changes in the budget each week. Try to identify the reason for each change, and figure out how to resolve it accordingly.

Also, try to identify the drivers for access spending and control “runaway” or “last minute” spending related to service projects. If necessary, add or shift additional resources to projects (i.e., people, in-kind donations, etc.) and/or assign volunteers/staff that are more skilled to certain tasks.

> Back to Resource Management <