Nonprofit budget template
A ready-to-use annual budget worksheet built the way nonprofits actually report — revenue grouped by source and expenses grouped by function (program, management & general, fundraising). Download it, drop in your numbers, and you have a board-ready budget that lines up with your Form 990.
Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers.
What's in the template
Revenue by source
- Individual contributions
- Grants (foundation, government, corporate)
- Program / earned revenue
- Fundraising events
- Investment / other income
Expenses by function (with typical %)
- Program services65%+
- Management & general15–25%
- Fundraising5–15%
Each function block has example line items, a subtotal, and a % of total — plus a program-expense ratio check.
How to use it
- 1. List your revenue by source first — contributions, grants, program/earned, events, and other — and be conservative with grants you haven't won yet.
- 2. Tag every expense to a function: program services, management & general, or fundraising. Some costs (rent, a director's time) get split across functions.
- 3. Watch the program-expense ratio — many funders and charity raters look for roughly 65%+ of total expenses going to program services.
- 4. Keep management & general and fundraising lean but honest; underfunding them is its own risk.
- 5. This functional split is exactly what Form 990 and your statement of functional expenses ask for, so building the budget this way saves work at year-end.
- 6. Review budget-versus-actual with the board every month.
For the reasoning behind functional allocation and the bookkeeping behind it, see the guide to nonprofit bookkeeping. Run a church instead? Use the church budget template, read how to build a church budget, or get a recommended split with the church budget calculator.
This template is a starting point, not financial, legal, or tax advice. Want your budget tracked automatically against actuals, by fund and by function? Start free in Vestrybooks.