Posted by Duncan Maru
Nyaya Health has recently updated our Budget page on our public-access wiki to provide our line-by-line budget that is accessible to all. This, we believe, is fundamental to our mission of creating testable, scaleable, and accountable models for the rapid scale-up of comprehensive health services in areas affected by poverty, isolation, government neglect, and war.
The public can view both aggregate and line-by-line data updated monthly on our wiki. We do this as follows. Our Achham team exports data from our accounting database (Quickbooks) and sends it over to our data management volunteers in the US. The US team then posts them into templated online spreadsheets.
For example, the following chart provides a summary of our expenditures that we have made in capital costs (equipment purchase, renovations) and our operating costs in the first-year to date. To achieve maximal impact in Nepal, Nyaya’s directors, US-based volunteers, and Kathmandu staff are all volunteers and we do not pay expatriate travel expenses. This is done so as to achieve maximum investment and impact locally in Achham. By clicking on the image you can view it on our budget wiki page:
Snapshot of our budget chart from our wiki
The below timeline provides a history of our expenditures. Since many items are capital and inventory expenses, there are several jumps in expenditures on big capital purchases that do not reflect our actual month-to-month costs. Still, this provides a a look at the financial requirements of rapidly scaling up acute and primary care services in a rural resource-deprived region. Again, clicking on the image will take you to our budget wiki page:
Snapshot of the budget time series on our wiki
Most importantly, we provide a line-by-line, searchable budget available here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p-TJjzE7A-O7vvlOQZMrgCw
There are three main reasons why we are doing this. The first is that we fundamentally believe that our supporters deserve to know where we are spending our money. They can both better understand the context of their giving and also provide us with feedback and insight. The second is that we hope that our colleagues working in similar situations throughout the globe can benefit from having timely raw data to help guide their work. Finally, it makes management sense. Our board of directors is all-volunteer. While we aim to have 2-3 board members on site at all times, our leadership when they are outside of Nepal want to stay updated. Having our data on our wiki in a straightforward format and open access for all is simply the most efficient way of collaborating.
Every expenditure is recorded, such as this water filter that our health aide Chandrikaji is using