STAGE 5. Defining the action plan

What steps should be completed?

STEP 3: Prepare the intervention's budget and sources of funding

Budget preparation

An intervention’s budget is an estimate of the total cost of the intervention and is usually organised in expenditure items that tend to include the following:

• Personnel: includes the team required to carry out the intervention according to the professional profiles, the labour charges, the hours and the total cost of each person involved in the intervention.
• Material: includes all the materials required for the intervention, both those aimed at the target population and those used by the implementers. Inventory material, such as facilities, computer equipment, etc. is usually differentiated from consumables.
• Travel and allowances: includes the cost of travel and living expenses due to the intervention.
• Other expenses: this section includes miscellaneous expenses. These include rental costs, utilities (electricity, water, gas, telephone, etc.), mail and possible incentives for participants. It is also important to consider expenses that will arise from dissemination actions once the intervention has already been completed and evaluated. One Step@a Time describes this in Stage 7. However, it is advisable to predict the expense of disseminating the intervention, either now or later in the planning process.

The budget should be appropriate and realistic for the intervention, covering all the resources required to carry out the intervention.

Sources of funding

Proposed sources of funding for the project should be determined in this step. In the context of intervention planning, the source of funding indicates the origin of the financial resources that will pay for the intervention. Funding sources can be:

• Internal: these are sources of funding from the organisation's own resources. For example, non-profit entities can obtain these resources from contributions by members, product sales, fundraising or other activities.
• External: these are sources of funding from an entity, public or private bodies, or even individuals, who provide financial resources to implement an intervention. For example, scholarships, subsidies, service contracts, donations, etc.