Two fundraising assignment

Sample Budget Activity

You are a board member for a small non-profit museum focused on local environmental issues. Your museum's general operating expenses are fully sustained by membership fees and entry ticket costs. 

With increased awareness of disparate knowledge and access to outdoor activities for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), the museum would like to support a summer program for local middle-school aged students. The goals of the program include:

1. Increasing diversity and representation for people of color within the outdoor industry.

2. Providing equitable and culturally sensitive outdoor programming to help youth build self-confidence, leadership skills, and community.

3. Expand knowledge of conservation biology.

You have located a foundation grant of $20,000 that supports this type of programming and must develop the budget for your program for the first year. Your goal is to keep the program free of charge for participants.

Program notes:

The program will run for 1 month during the summer (June). As a pilot of the program, you will only accept the first 20 students who register to participate. Participants will be picked up/dropped off in a school bus each Monday-Friday for the duration of the program. The school bus had already been acquired by the museum, so the program would only need to cover gasoline costs of approximately 35 miles per day (visits to other locations are included in the mileage estimate).

One full-time staff person will be assigned to running the program. Their normal salary is $45,000 per year, and the grant will need to cover their salary so that you can hire a temporary staff person to replace them. The foundation grant will not cover the cost of staff benefits, so that will be absorbed the nonprofit. There will be 3 un-paid volunteers to assist the staff person.

The museum has calculated an expense of $50/ student per week for supplies (workbooks, test kits, sports equipment, etc.)

They would also like to cover student, staff, and volunteer meals for the duration of the program, if possible.

Worksheet8.1A.doc  

Start by:

1. Deleting any components of the budget template that don't pertain to this program (for example, there will not be any corporate or government funding, so you can remove those items from the list of revenue sources; the program won't need to spend money on postage, copy services, etc. so you can remove those).

Then,

2. Fill in the budget template with the information that you have available, and estimate the cost for meals and gasoline to remain within the maximum level of funding available ($20,000). You cannot go over the budget.

Submit the filled in worksheet to complete this activity. Remember, this is just an exercise so the numbers don't need to be perfect, but do some external research to try to get them as accurate as you can.