NGO Budget Planner
Build a professional, donor-ready NGO project budget the way UN agencies, foundations and CSR reviewers expect to see it — personnel, travel, procurement, training, administration, indirect cost, gender & climate markers, localization and contingency, all calculated live in your browser.
How to Use This NGO Budget Planner
A step-by-step guide to preparing a donor-ready project budget, from first draft to final export — for UN agency grants, USAID and EU applications, CSR proposals, government schemes and foundation funding.
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Enter your project information.
Add the project name, implementing organization, funding agency, location, sector, duration and currency. This information automatically appears on your cover page and every exported budget document.
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List every funding source.
Add each donor, CSR partner, government grant or community contribution with its committed, requested, approved and disbursed amounts. The tool calculates your balance and funding percentage automatically, and flags any funding gap.
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Build your budget line by line.
Add personnel costs, travel, training, procurement and other direct costs in the line-items table, then use the dedicated Human Resource and Travel builders for detailed staff and trip-level costing.
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Apply indirect cost, contingency and inflation.
Choose a preset percentage or enter your own rate for overhead, contingency and multi-year inflation. These apply automatically on top of your direct costs.
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Review the dashboard, disbursement schedule and risk checks.
Check your cost composition chart, quarterly cash-flow projection, and the automatic warnings for donor-compliance thresholds, missing fields, or an uncovered funding gap.
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Run the Donor Compliance Checker and generate your narrative.
Select the donor you're applying to for a rules-based compliance check, then generate a first-draft budget justification you can paste directly into your proposal.
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Export your budget.
Download a print-ready PDF with cover page, or export to Word, Excel or CSV for your donor's reporting template. Your budget also autosaves in this browser as you work.
1. Project Information
Basic details that appear on every export and the cover page.
2. Funding Sources
Add every source contributing to this budget — grants, CSR, in‑kind, community share.
| Source | Type | Partner type | Committed | Requested | Approved | Disbursed | Balance | Funding % |
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3. Budget Line Items
Every cost in the project, grouped by category. Totals calculate automatically.
| Category | Description | Qty | Unit | Unit cost | Freq | Months | Tax % | Funding source | Total |
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4. Human Resource Cost Builder
Staff salaries and benefits, spread across the project duration. Adds automatically to Personnel.
| Staff / position | Monthly salary | Benefits | PF | Insurance | Travel allow. | Comm. allow. | Months | Total |
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5. Travel Budget
Domestic and international travel, per diem and local transport.
| Type | Description | Trips | Unit cost | Persons | Total |
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6. Indirect Cost, Contingency & Inflation
Applied on top of the direct cost total below.
7. Budget Summary Dashboard
Everything below updates live as you edit the tables above.
8. Disbursement & Cash Flow Schedule
Split the total budget into quarterly tranches — the format most donors expect for disbursement planning and burn-rate tracking. Adjust each quarter's share; it should add up to 100%.
| Quarter | Share of budget (%) | Amount | Cumulative |
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9. Risk & Donor‑Compliance Indicators
Common-sense checks against typical donor ranges. Always confirm exact limits with your funding agency.
10. Donor Compliance Checker
Checks your indirect-cost rate and cost structure against the rules each donor typically applies. Reference only — always confirm against the actual grant agreement.
11. Scenario Planning
Compare an optimistic, realistic and bare-minimum version of this budget — useful when a donor asks "what if we can only fund part of this?"
| Item | Minimum | Realistic | Optimistic |
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Minimum keeps personnel and mandatory admin only and drops discretionary categories (Training, Workshop, IEC Materials, Awareness Campaign). Optimistic adds a 10% delivery buffer on top of the realistic total.
12. Budget Narrative Generator
A first-draft written justification, in donor language, generated from the numbers you've entered. Edit before submission.
13. Export Center
Download a cover page, full budget tables and summary in your preferred format.
PDF export opens your browser's print dialog — choose "Save as PDF" as the destination for a print-ready document with cover page and page numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Disclaimer
This tool is intended for educational, planning, and budgeting assistance. Funding agencies may have specific financial guidelines, templates, indirect cost policies, procurement rules, and reporting requirements. Users should always verify budget formats and compliance requirements with the respective donor before submission.