Gather Financial Data

March 1, 2009

Gather Financial Data

Once you have decided on the time period and programmatic scope of your cost analysis, you can begin gathering the relevant data accordingly.

Once you have decided on the time period and programmatic scope of your analysis, you can begin gathering the relevant data accordingly.

Next In: Nonprofit Cost Analysis Toolkit

  1. Determine Purpose and Scope of Analysis

  2. Gather Financial Data

  3. Allocate Direct Costs

  4. Allocate Indirect Costs

  5. Check Your Data

  6. Apply This Knowledge

  7. Links and Resources

  8. Frequently Asked Questions

Financial information required for a comprehensive cost analysis

Tools and Templates

The first two items provide you with the raw cost amounts that we will allocate in later steps, whereas items three to five provide information to help guide our allocations. If items four and five (breakdown of staff and infrastructure utilization by program) are unavailable through existing records, invest some time in conducting interviews. Not only is this data crucial for your analysis, it can also shed light on how effectively your organization is utilizing staff capacity –often the most expensive resource for nonprofits.

Creative Commons License logo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license are available in our Terms and Conditions.
The Bridgespan Group would like to thank the JPB Foundation for its generous and ongoing support of our knowledge creation and sharing work.

Related Content