Brilliant Budgeting

Budgeting is a large portion of Glass’ job. With MIP, he could easily account for grants over a five-year period and appreciated how MIP lets him compare Humanities ND’s budget to actual spending.

MIP also allows Glass and Humanities ND to account for various types of funding like state funding, foundation grants, gifts and donations, restricted gifts, and so many others. When it comes to budgeting, Glass likes how MIP can track each funding source with its own budget.

“[Grantors and organizations] want to know how their money was spent,” said Glass. “[With MIP], we’re able to produce a report for a single foundation, but we can also do reports for the whole project budget and for programs across various funding sources.”

“MIP was the only system that worked really well,” Glass said. “....And that’s why we’ve stuck
with it for so long.”

Many Humanities ND grants have a cost-matching element where the organization must match each grant dollar-for-dollar as the money for the grant is allocated and spent. The organization also receives donations to offset the spending. Glass created a special fund, which he refers to as the “Cost-Share Fund” to track the cost-share from each of these grants and ensure the organization meets the cost-sharing requirements.

“For-profit bookkeeping systems have all these extra spreadsheets trying to keep track of prior years, budgets, and all this business,” Glass said. “[MIP] makes it much easier to see [your organization’s fiscal picture] all at once. You print out just the reports you need for that year or for the last three years, or if you need to look at just one source of funds … you can do that as well as looking at all your
cost share.