Before Finalizing Your 2025 Budget, Consider These Six Things
If your nonprofit is like most, the hardest – and most intense – budget discussions revolve around staff costs and overhead. Which makes sense, given that these likely comprise the lion’s share of your organization’s expenses. But while budget season is time for the big decisions in support of a plan of action for a new year, it also offers an opportunity to consider creative ways that resource allocation can help advance your mission and vision. Here are six areas where a relatively small investment can result in transformative improvements:
Professional development and board training. Are you and your top executives realizing your full potential as leaders? Executive coaching can prepare your leadership team to approach their roles with confidence. Workshops and retreats for your board can help your most important volunteers understand their responsibilities and to feel good about fulfilling them.
Outsourced services. Small teams often struggle to launch new initiatives. Rather than piling more onto already strained to-do lists (and risking staff burnout), consider outside contractors as a way to bring in the expertise you need in areas like human resources, bookkeeping and accounting, fractional nonprofit staffing, and more. Our list of referral partners is a great place to start.
Technology upgrades and integrations. Are you getting the most out of your technology investments? Is your donor database providing the support you need to grow your fundraising program? If not, fractional professionals can help. The More Than Giving Co.’s fractional technology team is versed in using CRMs to strengthen constituent relations and fundraising. Fractional professionals are easily onboarded and can be engaged for exactly the amount of time and duration you need.
Administrative support. Extra hands on deck can make all the difference in your ability to achieve ambitious goals – without losing sight of crucial day-to-day activities. A Nonprofit Virtual Assistant (NPVA®) might be just what you need to get out from under the weight of too many tasks and too little time. Like other fractional professionals, an NPVA® service can be “right-sized” to your precise needs.
Rainy day fund. Like it or not, unexpected financial obligations and disruptions to funding streams happen. Healthy organizations should have contingency funds in reserve to protect the organization from a bad fundraising year or an unforeseen crisis, typically enough to cover budgeted expenses for three to six months. “Rainy day funds” can also help an organization pursue an unanticipated opportunity. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little extra cash on hand when opportunity knocks?
Planning for the future. Even small organizations can make it a priority to begin an investment fund. Putting resources to work in this way supports your organization’s longevity.
You may not be able to pursue all of these budget ideas, but consider adding at least one to your plans if you can. Creative allocation of your 2025 budget resources can have a huge impact on your organization’s effectiveness over the long term.
The More Than Giving Co. can help you understand how fractional staffing can fit within your organization.
Schedule a call today to learn how we can help.