Financial management is one of the basic functions of all public and nonprofit organizations. As such, the skills and competencies required to budget and manage financial resources effectively are some of the most important that you will learn during a student's graduate studies.
Understanding how public and nonprofit organizations manage financial resources is vitally important to understanding their health and where they place their priorities. Being able to budget will give students an advantage in securing resources. Being able to read a financial statement of a nonprofit or NGO will assist you in understanding the net worth of that organization. Being able to analyze the financial statements of a government will suggest to you the economic vitality of its community.
The financial environments for public and nonprofit organizations are changing. Governments are pressured to “do more with less” and nonprofit organizations are expected to “do better at doing good”. In order to meet these challenges, it is important that managers and employees of public and nonprofit organizations possess the fundamentals of budgeting and financial analysis.
