The Budget-Building Book for Nonprofits: A Step-by-Step Guide for Managers and Boards

Provides clarity, strategy, and utility to the financial management and asset management of social sector organizations. --Frances Hesselbein, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management This nuts-and-bolts workbook guides nonprofit executives and boards through the budget cycle, offering practical instruction on completing each step of the process. This one-source budgeting tool kit is specifically designed to give nonprofits everything they need to prepare, approve, and implement their own budgets. It is a start-to-finish guide that is comprehensive and easy to use. It provides smaller nonprofit budgeters and non-financial nonprofit managers with a simple, systematic method to create, maintain, and track their budgets. Examples, to-do lists, worksheets, schedules, and other hands-on tools help readers get down to work. Murray Dropkin draws on years of experience in working with nonprofit financial management to make this workbook an essential tool for anyone involved in financial management within a nonprofit organization.

Table of Contents:
UNDERSTANDING BUDGETING BASICS. Why Budgets and Budgeting Are Important to Nonprofits. Understanding Basic Types of Nonprofit Budgets: Overview. Key Board and Staff Roles and Responsibilities in Nonprofit Budgeting. Establishing Budget Guidelines, Priorities and Goals. How Different Sources and Types of Income Can Affect Budgeting. Strategies for Developing Organizationwide Operating Budgets. STEP-BY-STEP BUDGETING GUIDELINES. Start with the Budget-Building Checklist. Designing Your Budgeting Policies and Procedures. Creating Your Budgeting CalAndar. Orienting Program and Department Managers to Budgeting. Contents of the Annual Budget Preparation Package. Developing Organizationwide Operating Budgets. Developing Operating Budgets for Individual Programs, Units, or Activities. Major Components of Operating Budgets. Estimating Income and Expenses. Allocating Administrative, Overhead and Shared Costs. Revising Draft Operating Budgets. Presenting Your Annual Budget Proposal to the Board. Board Review, Revision, and Approval of the Final Budget. Monitoring and Modifying Approved Budgets. Using Your Budget. PRACTICAL BUDGETING RESOURCES. Appendix A. Blank Master for Creating a Program/Unit Work Plan. Appendix B. Sample Blank Budget Formats. Appendix C. Examples of Financial Reports for Analyzing and Monitoring Income and Expenses. Appendix D. Tools for Analyzing Financial Reports and Planning Corrective Action. Appendix E. Example of a Detailed Organizationwide Budget. Appendix F. Miscellaneous Budgeting Checklists and Examples.

About the Author :
MURRAY DROPKIN is a the managing partner of the accounting firm Dropkin and Company, Certified Public Accountants, which specializes in working with nonprofit organizations. Dropkin has published extensively within the field of nonprofit accounting. He coedits The Nonprofit Report, a monthly newsletter on nonprofit accounting, taxation, and management, and coauthored the three-volume Guide to Audits of Nonprofit Organizations. BILL LATOUCHE has, over the last thirty years, used his writing, planning, training and organizing skills to help a wide range of individuals, groups, and organizations get what they want from complex business, governmental and nonprofit entities. Bill has served as a Fellow of the Institute for Individual and Organizational Development, and is coeditor of The Nonprofit Report.

Review :
"This is a book every nonprofit needs." —Peter F. Drucker "Provides clarity, strategy, and utility to the financial management and asset management of social sector organizations." —Frances Hesselbein "This book is clear, insightful and required reading for all who are responsible for the success of not for profits. If you work for or run a not for profit agency you should read this book" —Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting and The Empowered Manager "The Budget Building Book for Nonprofits is a definitive and practical guide to the art of budgeting. It is well written and reliable as well as easily understandable." —Ron Werthman, vice president, finance/treasurer and CFO, Johns Hopkins Health System, The Johns Hopkins Hospital