The document provides tips for nonprofit film festival organizers on creating an effective budget. It discusses establishing governance policies, setting program targets, understanding basic financial terms, and eight essential steps for budgeting: having the board adopt a formal budget policy, focusing on the profit and loss statement, building strong relationships with bookkeepers, adopting standard formatting conventions, breaking out broad line items, being conservative with revenue estimates, creating a cash flow budget, and devising a system for monitoring actual spending compared to the budget.

1. !
! Budgeting Essentials: Making it All Add Up
Tuesday, September 16

2. Lesli Klainberg
Executive Director, Film Society at Lincoln Center
Lesli Klainberg is the Executive Director of the
Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Previously, she was Managing Director and the
Producer of the New York Film Festival and the
Film Society's annual Chaplin Award Gala.
With over twenty five years experience, Ms.
Klainberg is also an award winning documentary
producer and director and her production company,
Orchard Films, has produced documentaries that
have screened at film festivals including; Sundance,
Berlin, Frameline and Provincetown and been
broadcast on PBS, A&E, AMC, IFC and WE.

3. Colin Stanfield
Festival Producer, 52nd New York Film Festival
Colin Stanfield is the Festival Producer for the
52nd New York Film Festival and President of
Raspberry Point, a festival consultancy company.
Previously he was Managing Director of the San
Francisco Film Society, Executive Director of the
Nantucket Film Festival, Festival Producer of
SilverDocs AFI Discovery Documentary Film
Festival and Associate Director of International
Programs at IFP

4. Budgeting: Why
Governance. Board of Directors approval. Fiduciary
responsibility
Establish Program Targets and involve staff
Get a handle on expenses and manage cash flow
Develop Organizational Best Practices

5. Basic Financial Terms
Financial Statements. Income Statement (P&L) and Balance Sheet
Chart of Accounts
Accounts Payable and Accounts receivable
Cash vs Accrual Accounting
Bookkeeper vs Accountant (Audited Financial Statements)
Cashflow Budget/Cashflow Statement

6. !
!
! Eight Budget Essentials
or
Eight Things We Wished We’d Known
When We Started

7. 1. Have your Board Adopt a
Formal Budget Policy

8. 2. Live and Die by Your P&L
Start with the previous year’s detailed P&L, record
questions on a scratch pad. Number transactions on the
P&L so they correspond with your questions on your
scratch pad. Highlight in yellow on the P&L.
Later when you start your budget, you’ll want high-light
in another color (pink) every line once its in the budget.

9. 3. Establish Highly-communicative Working
Relationship With Your Bookkeeper
With your marked up previous year’s detailed P&L and
scratch pad, get together in person with your
bookkeeper. Look at paper back-up and get to the bottom
of everything
Insist on some sort of annotation convention for memo
fields when recording transactions

10. 4. Adopt Established Financial
Conventions and Formatting
Use colors as flags while a budget is a work in progress.
but keep it PLAIN JANE when finished.
All corporate Annual Reports publish Audited Financial
Statements in the back. Color up front, black & white in
back for financials. Emulate.

11. 5. Break Out Line Items
Which are Too Broad
Total the individual items in a new column.
Present the total in line with the non-broken out lines

13. 6. Be Conservative with Revenues
Avoid temptation to make budget balance by increasing
sponsorship, ticket sales, passes, etc.
Don’t include returning sponsorships that are less than
50% certain, without highlighting this to your board
(loudly).

14. 7 . Build a Cash-Flow Budget
Use P&L to identify when transactions took place and
then schedule in your cash-flow budget
Quickbooks “Build a Budget” function requires amounts
be assigned to a specific month. Google Doc Templates

15. TOTAL
SFFS Fall Awards
09/10/13 Profit and Loss Budget Overview
September through December 2013
Sep '13 Oct '13 Nov '13 Dec '13 Sep - Dec '...
Income
Contributed Income 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Earned Income 2,500.00 7,500.00 0.00 10,000.00
Ticket Sales 26,300.00 62,950.00 15,000.00 104,250.00
Total Income 28,800.00 70,450.00 15,000.00 114,250.00
Expense
5100 Advertising/Listi... 0.00 0.00 0.00
5170 Equipment Lease 1,200.00 5,600.00 6,800.00
5515 Contractors 1,666.00 833.00 2,499.00
Postage & Delivery 100.00 50.00 150.00
Printing/photocopying 1,500.00 833.00 1,433.00 3,766.00
Professional Fees 2,500.00 10,500.00 28,050.00 41,050.00
Travel and Entertainm... 11,000.00 7,000.00 18,000.00
Venue Rental 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total Expense 4,000.00 25,299.00 42,966.00 72,265.00
Net Income -4,000.00 3,501.00 27,484.00 15,000.00 41,985.00
QuickBooks Setup Budgets Windows

16. 8 . Devise a System for
Monitoring Actuals