The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

The Budget

Assessing the proposal's budget is far more an art than a science. There is no set standard as to how expensive any project should be, and costs do vary from place to place. There are, however, a few useful assessment methods. The first is to check the budget against the proposal's narrative. If the proposal says that the lion's share of the project's resources will be concentrated on providing mentors for impoverished youth, then the preponderance of spending should come out of the Mentoring line item. If the line item for buying computers is by far the largest, there is a problem: both of these propositions cannot simultaneously be true.

The second method is to follow the doctrine of proportionality. Although costs will vary from ...