Budget Preparation
One of the most important aspects of intervention planning is preparing a budget to cover all of your expenses. Planning a budget for an intervention requires much more than just the materials and supplies you’ll need for the intervention activities themselves. You should also think about staff time you will need to compensate (including whether or not you’ll need to hire additional staff), incentives or promotional items to recruit or retain participants or even renting facilities to house the activities if your space is not large enough. Keeping in mind that each intervention requires different resources and each organization has its own unique capacity to conduct interventions with their existing resources, the following list provides key elements for you to consider when preparing your budget. |
Key elements of an intervention budget:
Personnel: Personnel refers to all staff members who will be involved in the various intervention activities. Others helping with the project, such as consultants or technical assistance, are not considered Personnel, but are rather included in the Purchased Services Total
Things to consider: Do you have enough people to implement the intervention? Will you need to hire additional part-time or full-time staff to help you? Do you need to include any benefits along with the pay rate? Will your staffing needs change over the duration of your intervention, from year to year?
Examples: Principal investigator, project staff, interns
General Office Supplies/Materials: General Office Supplies and materials include any of the fixed costs of having your organization remain in operation. Office operations and equipment are included in this category.
Things to consider: Will you need to spend more on office supplies and materials the first year of your project? What basic materials or supplies will you need just to conduct business?
Examples: Computers, software, office supplies/materials, telephones, copy machines, office furniture, postage, etc.
Intervention Materials: Intervention materials are the actual materials you will need to implement your intervention.
Things to consider: Do you have enough materials for all the participants you are anticipating? Can you prepare the materials yourself or do you need to hire someone to prepare them for you (e.g., a printing company or an advertising agency)? Do you need to conduct research or a needs assessment before designing your materials?
Examples: Incentives or promotions for intervention participants, materials such as pre/post surveys and copies, other intervention materials such as brochures, posters
Meeting and Activity Space: Space refers to the physical space that you need outside your organization’s office for meetings or intervention activities. Some places may also charge a fee for use of audio visual equipment, such as projectors or TVs. Food and drinks provided at the meeting should also be included in this category.
Things to consider: Does your current office space accommodate everything you will need for the intervention? Do you have room to conduct meetings with other partners or internal staff? Do you have appropriate space to conduct your intervention activities or will you need to get permission to use other spaces? Will any of your partners donate space for meetings or intervention activities? Will you need to rent facilities to conduct your intervention? Will you need to travel to your intervention’s participants or partners, if so where will you meet with them?
Examples: Meeting rooms, church basements, school gymnasiums, community centers, multi-purpose rooms, park pavilions, etc.
Transportation/Travel: Transportation can involve providing a means for participants to travel to your intervention activities in order to increase participation or providing transportation for you and your staff to travel to other locations to conduct intervention activities. This may also include fees or stipends to attend professional meetings or perform interviews or surveys out-of-town.
Things to consider: Are your participants mainly in a rural or urban setting where public transportation is not available to them? Do your participants have access to public or personal transportation or do you need to provide it for them? Do your staff members need to travel to participants’ homes or communities to conduct intervention activities? Will your staff need to travel to conferences or to make presentations outside of your city?
Examples: Bus tokens or cab fare for program participants, rental vans to pick up participants, mileage reimbursement for staff members conducting intervention activities, travel stipends, air fare and per diem for out-of-town travel
Purchased Services: Purchased services refer to fees paid to individuals or companies for a specific service, usually occurring temporarily during the project, that are not completed by the regular project staff.
Things to consider: Are your staff members knowledgeable in using your equipment and software programs to be able to fix problems as they arise? Will you need to hire someone to train you on your intervention (e.g., developing a mass media campaign) or evaluation (e.g., conducting statistical analyses)? Will you need to hire specific expertise and services to assist you in delivering your intervention (e.g., faith-based community representatives to speak at a local event)?
Examples: Technical assistance, consultants, contracts
Indirect Costs: Indirect cost is a percentage (determined by your organization) that includes costs incurred by the organization as a result of the project but are not easily identifiable with a specific component of the project. Indirect cost amounts are calculated by multiplying the indirect percentage by the total direct and personnel costs. These are sometimes also referred to as facilities and administrative costs.
Things to consider: Do you have enough income/revenue from other sources to cover your rent, utilities, phone/internet usage or do you need to include these as part of the intervention budget? Have you developed a partnership with others that may already include some of these resources?
Examples: Rent, utilities (e.g., gas, electric, sewage, trash removal), telecommunications (phone line charges, long distance, fax machine, e-mail, internet), property insurance, legal expenses, or building maintenance costs.
Now that you are more familiar with different components of your intervention budget, the following printable worksheets will help you work through planning your budget.
Budget Preparation Explanation
Use this Budget Preparation Explanation Worksheet to better understand how to calculate specific details of your budget (personnel expenses, fringe benefits, indirect costs, etc.)
Budget Preparation Worksheet
You may print off this Budget Preparation Worksheet to begin filling out the actual costs for your intervention.
Example Budget Spreadsheet with Calculations
This Excel file will show you sample calculations for an entire intervention, which will assist you in setting up the budget spreadsheet for your own intervention. Remember to include multiple years in your budget if your intervention will last longer than one year.