Federal grants complicate the budgeting process. You have to consider a lot of different scenarios, and you don’t have any room for error. In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Stacy Fitzsimmons and learn more about budgeting for Community Health Centers when grants are part of the picture. Listen in to learn about where to start with your budget, why you need to break costs into buckets, and how to get yourself audit-ready.

 

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• The biggest challenge of grant budgeting
• Creating a realistic, achievable budget
• Where to start with your budget
• Using budget categories for your expenses
• Breaking down cost buckets
• Knowing how much money you’ve spent and how much is left
• The joint responsibility for budgeting
• Planning the budgeting cycles for different scenarios
• Putting guardrails in place
• How to set yourself up to be audit-ready
• Documentation back-up
• Having policies and procedures that support how you use your system
• Using budgeting and expense tracking to tie into performance measures

 

Resources:

Stacy Fitzsimmons

eBook: Set up Your Community Health Center for Federal Grant Success: https://hello.blackbaud.com/budgeting-for-community-health.html  

Whitepaper: Data-Driven Decision Making for Community Health Centers https://hello.blackbaud.com/Datat-Driven-Decisions-eBook.html

 

Quotes: 

“With this type of budgeting, you’ll also be setting yourself up for success and making sure that all of your funds are traceable within the accounting system by your grant award.”

“Why I recommend this is that you will then be able to report against your budget by these categories when you’re asked to report against it.”

“If you have documentation that supports that expense entry, upload it with your entry so that documentation is right there.”