MUZC01H3 Exploring Community Music

Planning your Budget

Your budget is a very important component of your grant, and should be presented in a professional manner. This can be the tipping point to make your application successful. It is important to also ensure that you are including costs that the granting bodies will cover. Your budget should reflect the narrative that you are telling in your proposal. There are numerous categories to think about, including: 

Direct Costs

This is usually the bulk of your budget, and the most critical component. You are asking for these funds from the funding source. Direct costs include:

a. Personnel:

- Human resources/staff costs, including salaries/speaking costs/honorariums

- You may need to check with similar organizations to see what comparable salaries are

- You can try Indeed or Work in Culture to see how much similar positions/organizations pay

- You can calculate the total using rate of hours x total hours

b. Travel/Transit

- Will you need to travel to deliver the program? If so, you may need to include airfare, hotel, food stipend

- Do you have program volunteers and want to cover their transit fees? e.g. tokens for the subway

c. Equipment/Supplies

- Will you need to purchase equipment and supplies in order to run your program? What are these? Check store websites in order to estimate costs.

- Supplies can include office, educational, computer supplies, etc. 

d. Space

- Will you need to rent any facilities? 

e. Advertising/Marketing

- Will you have to pay for promotion of the services or programs?

e. Overhead

- This could include things like set up and clean up, basic unforeseen costs

- This could also include insurance as well

Tips for creating budgets: