Course 405 - Financial Planning for Nonprofits

Course 405 - Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations (3 credits) 

The focus of this course is financial planning, including such topics as: basic planning and leadership principles, underlying organizational issues involved with planning and budgeting, financial planning principles and practices, including in-depth analysis of one organization’s planning process, knowledge of how organizational ethics, norms, strategic planning and direction influence both its income and expenses. (Course 303, Nonprofit Accounting is a prerequisite.)

This course counts toward credit as a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE Certification).

Professor: Barbara Clemenson

Learning Objectives for this Course

Week One

Students will:

• Understand the differences between management accounting and financial accounting.
• Understand the challenges with management accounting.
• Understand the importance and essence of information, and know how we can become better users and providers of information.
• Understand why planning is important, and know how to take the first steps in planning for an organization.
• Learn from a nonprofit executive what information he/she believes is important and what they use to make the decisions they face.

Week Two

Students will:

• Understand the critical importance of ethics in financing, both personally and organizationally.
• Assess their own ethics and determine one area in which they will become, with God's help, a person of greater integrity.
• Reflect on an organization that displayed great or little integrity.

Week Three

Students will:

• Understand what a budget is, and what it isn't.
• Know the proper process for planning a budget, including what questions to ask and answer BEFORE planning.
• Walk through a sample process of budgeting.
• Understand the major principles of sound budgeting, and the dangers of not following them.

Week Four

Students will:

• Understand the importance of setting goals and designing plans.
• Understand the differences between wants and needs, and be able to articulate, as well as empirically and objectively provide support for their program's needs.
• Be able to ask critical questions in order to assess if their organization should begin a program.
• Articulate the difference between outputs and outcomes, and formula precise outcomes for their programs.

Week Five

Students will:

• Understand at a deeper level how to actually plan in an organization.
• See samples of two years of actual budgeting worksheets and presentations from one organization.
• Refine their ability to articulate program needs and outcomes.
• Develop appropriate program activities and list needed inputs, based on those activities.

Week Six

Students will:

• Understand the expenses associated with program inputs, including:

• Direct expenses
• Indirect expenses
• Employee expenses
• Operating and capital expenses

• Determine expenses for their program, based upon the program inputs

Week Seven

Students will:

• Understand that basics of nonprofit income, including:
  • The difference between earned and unearned income
  • The advantages and disadvantages of each type of incom
• Determine what kind(s) of income are best suited for their program, and write a development plan to fund their program, explaining and justifying their decisions.

Week Eight

Students will:

• Understand that basics of capital campaign planning -- both expenses and income -- and how engaging in a capital campaign is different than and impacts an organization's ongoing operating budget.
• Apply the principles they have learned by analyzing the budgeting process of a nonprofit organization, assessing their procedures and offering recommendations.

Week Nine

Students will:

• Understand the importance of planning for cash flow for both operations and capital expenditures.
• Understand how cash flow issues, including seasonality, impacts an organization's financial planning.
• Apply the financial planning princles they have learned throughout the course by completing their project proposal.

Course Materials & Tuition 

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