What Funders Are Looking For in Your Financials

Funders often look at financials first because they want to support sustainable organizations with realistic project budgets that demonstrate thoughtful planning.

Without a compelling budget and appropriate financial package, even the best written grant proposals will be declined. This piece of the proposal writing process is not just for your financial or executive teams to manage. When done right, it is a highly collaborative process between leadership, development, programs, and accounting staff.

Understanding how to package your financials will help you win points during grant reviews and can help you build trust and credibility, which can lead to long-term, sustainable relationships with funders. 

During this webinar, Mary Jessup will help you understand what funders are looking for in your organizational budgets, how you can build effective and accurate program and project grant proposal budgets, and how you can communicate about costs in compliance with funder guidelines.

You will learn about:

• the key differences between organizational, program, and grant budgets;
• common overhead and program-specific costs, including how to allocate overhead to program costs;
• ways to communicate program costs in compliance with funder guidelines;
• what information funders look for in financial documents; and,
• common misconceptions that arise from funders, development professionals, and accounting professionals all using different terms to speak about the same financial/accounting principles.

You’ll see anonymized examples of grant budgets that have received positive feedback from funders, as well as constructive funder feedback about budgets and financials that missed the mark.

This webinar can help everyone involved in the grant process. Whether you’re an executive director who wants to have control over how your financials are represented, an accounting professional who is responsible for making sure financials are accurate, or a development professional who needs to package financial information in a compelling way, you’ll walk away confident that you can use your financials to win more grants.