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

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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.

157 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 1998

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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Profile Image for Martin Smrek.
108 reviews33 followers
April 24, 2022
I don't know who is supposed to be the target group of this book. Unless you've never heard what a budget is, there is not much you can learn from it. You'll receive trivial advise like you shoud count all your expenses and income and when you are running a deficit you should cut spending and increase your income. Well, duh! However, there are a couple of useful parts, such as instructions for board review of annual budget.
Profile Image for Kirk Lowery.
213 reviews37 followers
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July 24, 2011
This is not really a book about budgeting. It is more of a workbook or templates. The budget process is described in outline; but I found many of the templates to be less than useful or obvious.



Budgeting requires a log of data about past spending and the art is using that data along with the implications of future goals and objects and how they impact spending.
Profile Image for Angela Taylor.
13 reviews1 follower
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March 26, 2025
Very informative

I liked the book, but not having access to the firms which were formerly on the CD makes the Kindle version less useful. Is there somewhere we get access to those forms?
Profile Image for Samantha.
25 reviews
April 10, 2025
counting it because I had to read the whole thing for class. it's practical and offers good step by step instructions for many aspects of budgeting. I'll pull it out if I'm ever in charge of budgeting. 4 four stars for utility.
Profile Image for Amanda-Jane.
42 reviews
March 29, 2021
This book is a really useful tool for anyone who's seriously considering starting a nonprofit.
Profile Image for Neil R. Coulter.
1,300 reviews149 followers
May 4, 2016
This is a good, basic overview of budgeting. How basic? Early on in the book you find this sentence: "Your organization should always try to create a budget resulting in a surplus" (19). :) But really, it's a nice summary of the different stages of making a budget. For new academic admin and faculty, I would recommend this book along with Budgets and Financial Management in Higher Education, by Margaret J. Barr.
Profile Image for Sidi.
37 reviews
October 15, 2012
it's easy reading. finished it in one day with 200 pages.

lots of excel sheet, very down-to-earth skills and useful points towards budgeting for nonprofit org.

but i didn't remember that much after reading, since there is not too many case studies to apply the "formats" or the "principles" with practical world.
Profile Image for Amy Christine Lesher.
230 reviews63 followers
July 22, 2016
When I purchased this book I thought it would help me understand how to put a budget together for a small organization. This book is tailored for someone stepping into at least a program manager's position in a large nonprofit. It didn't help in the way I'd hoped.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews

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