“It’s Not in the Budget” is Killing Your Nonprofit’s Growth
Nonprofit: “We can’t do X. It’s not in the budget.”
This phrase makes no sense at all to me…
My colleague Sarah Olivieri recently called a budget ‘a guess about the future’.
I cheered. And I also paused and wondered why so few people see budgets this way.
Leader - You’re giving your budget too much power.
It’s just a plan of what you will likely do this year. It’s a compass to set your sail. It was never meant to be a locked box.
But, what do I see everyday in the nonprofit sector?
❌ Budgets acting as handcuffs - preventing innovation.
❌ Budgets seen as a set of strict rules set in stone - preventing growth.
❌ Budgets scrutinized, reduced, and THEN approved by the board - preventing flexibility.
Frankly, I think I’ve under-messaged this critical part of the methodology I teach.
Where This Belief Comes From in the Nonprofit Sector
Here's what I hear in nearly every discovery call:
"We could never present a budget with that much growth in it. We've never grown that much in one year before."
"We could never raise that much. We've never raised that much before."
Can I be blunt? This mindset is exactly WHY you aren't growing. It's why you aren't attracting investment-level donors. It's why your budget keeps looking like last year's budget, plus a little.
This is what I call a stretch budget — a number your team hopes to hit if things go well, instead of the number your organization actually needs to fully fund its mission. Stretch budgets don't set your team up for success. They set them up to manage scarcity.
I first heard the term "irrational frugality" from Bobbi Rebell Kaufman, CFP®. It's being penny-wise and pound-foolish — saying no to spending on principle, not on strategy. It's the mistaken belief that not spending money is inherently smart, safe, or responsible.
Irrational frugality will quietly starve your organization's growth. Not because your team doesn't care. Because nobody ever gave the budget permission to reflect the real vision.
Creating an Abundant, Multi-Year, Needs-Based Budget for Your Nonprofit
Creating an abundant, multi-year, needs-based budget is one of the MOST transformational steps I walk my clients through. There is little chance you'll raise more money each year if you skip this step.
It's only when you've created a REAL needs-based budget — one built on your organization's true need (programs + infrastructure + operations + reserve) — that you can design a REAL financing plan, model, and strategy that achieves that goal.
Full stop and full honesty: a financing plan is not a fundraising plan. A fundraising plan asks, "How do we hit this year's appeal goal?" A financing plan asks, "What does it take, in dollars and hours, to fully fund what our mission actually needs?" Those are two very different starting points, and they lead to two very different outcomes.
Here's a trick I use with clients when the number on the page starts to feel scary: flip it from a dollars lens to a percentages lens. A $50,000 website update feels enormous in isolation. But against a $7M budget, it's less than 1% of your organization's revenue — and it could be the very investment that helps you grow 10–20%. Money decisions do strange things to our brains. Perspective fixes that.
👉 Scarcity-minded, rigid budget creation processes are starving the nonprofit sector.
I'm so on fire about this today. This IS a fundraising issue. And it's keeping capable, mission-driven organizations from scaling to the size their community actually needs them to be.
What an Abundant Budget Makes Nonprofit Growth Possible
When leaders and boards stop treating the budget as a ceiling and start treating it as a compass, everything downstream changes:
🔥 Your team can finally build a true financing plan that raises to the real need — not just to what's already been committed.
🔥 Your board can spend its time helping you resource the mission, instead of nitpicking every line item.
🔥 Your organization can invest in the "someday things" — software, staff, consultants, new programs, benefits — the very year you need them, not three budget cycles from now.
🔥 Your fundraising team can align hours with dollars instead of running the transactional hamster wheel of appeals, campaigns, and events.
None of this happens by accident. It happens because someone in the organization decided the budget would serve the mission, instead of the other way around.
Ready to Rethink Your Budget?
If you're serious about investing in change this year, fill out this form and we'll hop on Zoom. I'll show you how to see the entire budgeting process differently — so you can invest in those "someday things" this year, not someday.
How about you? Is your budget acting as a compass, or as handcuffs?
Whenever you’re ready to scale your nonprofit’s general-operating revenue, there are THREE things you can do next:
👣 Follow me on LinkedIn where I share insider fundraising info daily — the same lessons I teach my clients through my consultancy about securing larger major gifts and diversifying revenue.
🍎 Get Resources + White Papers — download robust resources you can use to push against the nonprofits sector’s scarcity mindset, equip your board, and shift your entire team into high-ROI fundraising.
📈 Work with me to fully-fund your nonprofit organization’s strategic plan and aspirational budget. If you’re a business-minded nonprofit CEO or Executive Director with big growth plans but need to make charitable revenue from relational donors a bigger part of your budget, you can apply to work with me here.
