The Single Most Important Line Item for Your 2026 Budget

The Single Most Important Line Item for Your 2026 Budget

If the new fiscal year for your organization begins on January 1, odds are good that you are in the midst of drawing up your 2026 budget. Even if your financial picture is made up of just a few simple revenue and expense items, there are several excellent reasons to embrace the budget process as more than a collection of numbers.

Your budget provides a valuable framework for monitoring your organization’s progress, giving your board the tools to be proactive in addressing income gaps and expense leaps that may be on the horizon. Income benchmarks based on solid projections and expense targets built on sound financial management can serve as the basis for a work plan, keeping team members focused and motivated.

But the budget creation process can be more than that. The conversation about how you plan to acquire and spend resources is an opportunity to envision, or even reimagine, your nonprofit’s future. And while the expense side of your budget will likely include things like program costs, rent, utilities, tech tools and subscriptions, the thorniest item – staffing – is the most important.

Whatever your organization’s purpose, from art programs to healthcare, it is the people at your nonprofit who bring its mission to the community. Given the high cost and commitment required to build a team, it is easy to see how the topic ends up tabled again and again, even though staff expansion is the key to scaling up and increasing an organization’s reach and impact.

Recruiting, hiring, and onboarding a new staff member represent a heavy lift in terms of budget resources and bandwidth. Who has the time? Who has the human resources and legal expertise to help guide the process? How will we cover a competitive compensation package this year, and in subsequent years?

If you can get through those issues without pushing this critical discussion to a future agenda, the next set of questions will be equally challenging. If only one position can be added, which one should it be? A development director? A communications or marketing professional? A tech expert? Administrative support? Might all of these responsibilities be combined into one job description?

There is a better way. With fractional team building, it is possible to bring in the exact expertise you need, for exactly the time and duration you need it. Your fractional team can include experienced professionals in all of these areas for less than what it would cost to hire just one full-time employee.

Fractional staffing is a highly efficient and effective approach to accessing the expertise and people power you need to push the boundaries of your organization’s capacity. Professionals across the nonprofit management spectrum, from fractional development officers and communication specialists to systems experts and specially trained Nonprofit Virtual Assistants®, can be assembled into a balanced and strategic team designed to move your organization forward.

A fractional approach can provide a nonprofit’s first professional team, or it can be used to fill gaps in an existing organizational chart. Best of all, the fractional team can be adjusted as needed, to ensure that priorities are addressed and that resources are deployed with maximum efficiency.

Budgets are all about the bottom line. With fractional team building, the bottom line is that top-notch, experienced nonprofit professionals are within reach for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes. The power to scale up, to go from surviving to thriving, is just a budget line item away.

Is your nonprofit stuck in survival mode? What are you waiting for? Ask me how a budget line for fractional staff can transform your nonprofit.