The budget is a very important component in a proposal as it provides a clear financial plan, demonstrating how funds will be allocated to achieve project goals. In this video, Saloni, together with other experts from Sattva's Corporate Advisory team, share best practices that need to be followed while creating a project budget to present to a donor. Drawing on her extensive experience working with Corporate Donors.

This video explains a detailed project budget template designed specifically for NGOs preparing proposals for CSR funding. The video highlights that although the template may initially appear long and complex, it is extremely useful in making your project budget clear, credible, and aligned with corporate expectations.

The video covers the following key points:

• How to create a detailed budget breakup—such as M&E costs, salaries, travel, logistics, etc.
• The importance of providing accurate data and proper justification, especially with increasing CSR scrutiny.
• How to represent project salaries, unit costs, frequency, and number of units so that the actual project expenditure is transparent.
• Why quarter-wise budget planning is important to track corporate fund disbursement and utilisation accurately.
• The difference between direct and indirect costs and what should be included in each.
• Most importantly, how to calculate the cost per beneficiary, which helps corporates compare proposals and select the most effective project.

This video is recommended for NGOs preparing CSR funding proposals, finance and programme teams responsible for budgeting, organisations seeking to strengthen budget accuracy and transparency, and those aiming to develop reliable, detailed, and comparable project budgets.