Budget Class

Y'KNOW WHAT!?

Working for a non-profit, we are constantly applying for grants from local and national Foundations. The grant requests are usually long and oddly detailed and often ambiguous. I create the excel budgets for our applications since I manage the bookkeeping for the foundation. Each grant request has different budget requirements, some want to see the last three years, some want to see plan vs. actual, etc. etc.

During a recent phone interview with the Seattle Foundation, they told Donna (my boss) about how much they loved our budget and requested permission to use MY BUDGET FORMAT in ALL of their GRANT APPLICATION FORMS! The Seattle Foundation is a local foundation which provides guidance to individual philanthropists on where to give their dough.

I have had a special love for making forms and lists and spreadsheets in excel. At Eddie Bauer, Heidi and I created excel forms for checking out samples. I think that they still use this form.

So, this is yet another summit in my quest for the apex of excel excellence!

In other news, I recently collaborated with two other total stranger neighbors to write a grant to the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods (can you say "red tape" and "bureaucracy"!?) to develop a water spray park in the newly renovated Jefferson Park which is up the street here on Beacon Hill. We got the grant - 15K! woo hoo