Session 3. Budget, Timeline, Risk and Sustainability

A budget is the plan written in numbers

• Every line must match an activity in the logic model. If a cost cannot be tied to an activity, remove it or explain it. Reviewers use the budget to check whether you understand your own project.
• Write each line as quantity x unit cost x time = total, in a table anyone can check with a calculator. Use real prices from price lists or written quotes, not guesses. Arithmetic errors make the whole application look careless.
• Add a justification sentence per line: 'Books: 150 at 40,000 so'm lets each pupil borrow 1 book per week.' Avoid vague lines such as 'miscellaneous' and avoid padding. A small, stated contingency is acceptable only if the funder allows it.

Cash, in-kind and what the funder will not pay

• Show two columns: requested from the funder and contributed by the school and partners. Teacher time, a room and volunteer hours have value; list them as in-kind with a simple basis, such as 4 teachers x 2 hours x 30 weeks = 240 hours.
• Read the rules on eligible costs. Many funders do not pay for costs incurred before the award, for ordinary salaries, or for large equipment. A good budget never hides an ineligible cost under another name.
• Check money against the logic model. A laptop for the head's office is not an activity of a reading project, however useful it would be.

A timeline and a risk register that fit a real school year

• Lay out the project month by month: when funds arrive, when goods are bought, when teachers are trained, when each check happens. Mark the holiday periods, Navruz, end-of-year exams and the months when the building is used for other purposes.
• Funds often arrive later than hoped. Build a gap between award and first purchase, and never start work that depends on money you do not yet have in writing.
• A risk register lists 4 to 6 risks, each with likelihood (low, medium, high), impact, one action to reduce it and a named owner. Typical school risks: late funds, price rises, a trained teacher leaving, low parent support, damaged books.

Sustainability: what happens in year two

• Funders ask: when the grant ends, what continues and who pays? Separate one-off costs (shelves) from running costs (printing, replacing worn books) and show how the school will cover the running costs.
• The strongest sustainability is not money but habit: a routine in the timetable, trained teachers who train others, materials copied locally, a parent group that keeps the library open. The EEF stresses that how an innovation is prepared, delivered and sustained often decides whether it works.
• Be honest. Promising that the ministry or a company will pay from year two, without their written agreement, is a risk, not a plan.

Estimating costs without guessing

Start from activities, not from money. For each activity list what is needed: people's time, materials, space, transport, printing, repairs, food at workshops. Then price each item from a price list or a written quote, and write the date, because prices move. Check for hidden costs that are easy to forget: delivery, translation into Uzbek and Russian, extra copies, replacement of worn items, and the time of the person who keeps the records.

Use a sanity check: divide the total by the number of pupils or teachers who benefit. In the sample project, 10,290,000 so'm for 96 pupils is about 107,000 so'm per pupil. This does not prove the budget is right, but a figure ten times larger or smaller than similar projects invites a question you should be ready to answer.

Sustainability is mostly habit and people

Think of four kinds of sustainability: routines (the reading hour is in the timetable), people (more than one teacher knows how to run it), materials (the school can print or copy what is needed) and money (a named source covers running costs). A project that depends on one enthusiastic teacher is fragile; two trained teachers and a one-page routine card already lower the risk.

Write an exit plan that a funder can read in five lines: what ends, what continues, who is responsible, what it will cost in year two and where that money comes from. If a source is only hoped for, say so, and show what you will do without it. Honest limits are more convincing than a promise that cannot be checked.

Try it tomorrow

• Take any school purchase from last year and check it with quantity x unit cost x time.
• Draw a ten-month grid with Navruz, exams and holidays and place your project's first three steps.
• List what would continue in your project if the money stopped tomorrow, and who would do it.