Grant Seeker's Budget Toolkit [Paperback]

This is definitely not a book that you pick up as a reference source when you are beginning or in the middle of preparing a budget. It is not a book for beginners, unless you have the time and patience to work your way through, chapter by chapter, learning their process step by step. Indeed, it would be a good text for a full semester class, with lectures and homework and steady progression through its many topics. Budgets don't really come into the picture until Chapter 5. The authors require that you learn or relearn their terminology relevant to grant writing before you can approach actual budgeting. Throughout the book they present concepts and ideas, and drag on through several paragraphs or pages saying what something is not before saying what it is. By their definition, of course - which you must accept to move forward.

This is really a book on preparing grant applications, not just budgets. Several chapters and sections of chapters are devoted to projects, programs, defining problems, defining solutions, project development, and program evaluation. Each is described in detail, with examples and forms, which are also available on the accompanying CD-ROM. By the time you get to Chapter 5 and see a budget form you are exhausted. But take a vitamin pill - Chapters 6 through 9 detail in depth the difference components of a budget, using their terminology. Which you memorized back in the beginning of the semester for the first test. Again, the explanations are exhaustive and belabored, and stated often in negatives, which is confusing. For example, Chapter 6 is dedicated to explaining direct costs. There are nine pages defining the different types of travel, including definitions of travel by watercraft and by animal. After all the various modes of travel are defined, the rest of the chapter explains how to acquire each of them on site and the different types of each. Bus travel is broken down into inter-city, intra-city, and chartered. They also describe express buses and local buses, and where and how to purchase tickets. More information than most of us need, to say the least. If you don't know the difference between an express and a local bus by now, you are in big trouble. Not that it is relevant to preparing a budget anyway.

The authors are committed to a budget format that uses very specific line items. They state that any item you can put in a budget can fit into one of their categories. Just for fun, I came up with a couple of items I would put in a budget that I couldn't fit into their scheme. And if you want to use their forms from the CD-ROM, you must do all your budgets according to their line items. You are on your own if you have a potential funder that demands you use their forms and their line items.

If you can ignore all the indirect, convoluted and useless information, this book has a lot to offer. Many concepts are very valuable and useful. Some of the forms are also useful. There are planning forms and evaluation forms in addition to more budget forms that usually appear in one place. Select the information that is relevant, ignore the rest and use what is applicable. Wading through the chaff to get to the wheat is not easy, but many of the kernels are worth the effort. And if you are taking or teaching a full semester course this could be a useful text or supplement.

I am torn about this book, because I believe grant seekers should NOT be the ones to design programs; program staff ought to do that. However, I realize that in reality grants people often end up with this task, or can act as advisors and coaches to those going through the process. And in any case, we grant seekers need to understand the task of project design and how it relates to expressing a project in numbers and words when approaching a funder.

The book goes on to focus on budgets, after the groundwork of planning has been expertly laid. The sections on budgets are very useful for anyone dealing with government proposals.

So, while the book takes a stance I don't necessarily agree with - that the grant seeker is a project designer - I have rated it highly because it is sure to result in better planned projects for anyone who follows its advice.