Budget Line Items
When creating your budget, it is critically important to anticipate all possible costs. Without doing so, you could find yourself having to make up the difference by cutting corners or asking your funders for more money. Either scenario can negatively affect the program's prospects for success or future funding. Most of the line items in your budget will be obvious, but there are a couple areas that are notoriously underestimated.
Coordination
A common mistake made in establishing new programs is underestimating the time required to properly manage or coordinate the program. It is recommended that from the very beginning of any program, the right amount of coordination time be funded. The Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI) experience has been to allot one hour of coordinator time for every eight hours of intern time or four hours of green living program representative time.
Overhead
Another common oversight is the overhead cost of running the program during the course of the year. Overhead costs are commonly associated with things like rent, payroll administration, computer support and phone service. The difficulty is that you rarely know what these costs will be until the program is well underway. To address this problem, the HGCI now includes a 15-percent overhead element in new program budgets. It may be helpful to do the same. The problem with failing to include this in the initial budget is that later in the year you may have to make ends meet, being forced to take money from salaries to make payments.