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Question: I work at a Kansas City non-profit that provides medical services internationally. I am looking into redesigning our international scout trips. These trips are designed to look into potential sites to send medical teams to provide healthcare. I hope to put into place a formalized needs assessment using a CBPR approach to implement into each proposed international site. We are looking into grants to help fund the endeavor of implementing the needs assessment overseas. I was wondering if you had any tips on creating a budget for needs assessments. Thank you.
Answer: Thank you Rebekah for your inquiry. Your international work is very impressive. The Community Tool Box does provide some materials on developing budgets in general see: /en/table-of-contents/finances/managing-finances/annual-budget/main What are the elements of an annual budget? Why should you prepare an annual budget? Some practical considerations Planning and gathering information to create a budget Putting it all together: Creating and working with a budget document The specifics on your budget will depend on the form of needs assessment that you decide to perform. Would these be on-site teams using checklists? Or interviews with local key informants and institutions? Survey instruments? All of these will have different cost structures. So there is no easy set of tips for developing a needs assessment budget. We would be happy to attempt to answer follow up questions. Best wishes on your important work.
Question Date: Wed, 04/09/2014