Budget/Financial Analysis Assignment

Finance Question

8 pages (2400 words), Double spaced, APA 7

Budget/Financial Analysis Assignment: This assignment is designed to provide you with a “hands on” experience with the information available in a budget. It is purposely built into the course to occur over the last weeks as, hopefully, you will have gleaned additional knowledge on budgeting and financial analysis through the first few weeks of the course. Your assignment is to present, summarize, and analyze the budget or finances of a general-purpose government (city, county, town, borough, village, etc) or non-profit entity of your choice. Your paper should discuss how the social, political, economic, and historical characteristics of the municipality are reflected in their budgets. Your task is to aggregate, organize, and evaluate a great deal of information (most of it numerical) into a readable paper. The organization and presentation of the information is crucial to the conveyance of information. A summary of the budget will not earn you a passing grade for this assignment. This assignment is worth 30% of your overall grade. Completion of the assignment should help students achieve all seven-course learning outcomes mentioned above. These learning outcomes are aligned with all five NASPAA competencies.

The purpose of this project is to provide students the opportunity to develop practical knowledge about budget practices and techniques and also to review and assess an entity’s financial health. The project work you accomplish should ideally consist of three (3) phases. The first phase is sourcing and describing/detailing to me an organizational overview of your selected entity. The second phase is an assessment and appraisal of the organization’s financial picture. You will review financial reports, audits, and budgets.

This is the leg / “Grunt” work. The third and final phase is completing the paper/writing portion (8 pages, not including references/title) posting in the discussion forum a synopsis of your work, and commenting on others’ work (Week 11)

City of South El Monte CA Budget

https://www.cityofsouthelmonte.org/ArchiveCenter/V...

** I do have access to additional documents for the City of South El Monte if needed.

Book to Resource:

The Basics of Public Budgeting and Financial Management

Charles E. Menifield (2017.)

Additional Resources:

https://www.governing.com/

https://www.governing.com/sponsored/local-governme...

https://cms4files.revize.com/capecoralfl/departmen...

Class,

This is in response to some questions I have been getting/have received. Here are my additional notes and helpful hints.

-the entire efforts is 8 pages, exclusive of title and resources.

-the "phases" are noted to guide you along. The entire work is just one effort, one file, one submittal. The discussion forthcoming will be discussing your work amongst yourselves. It will be a standard discussion.

-unfortunately I do not have access to past semester papers to provide a sample/example.

-your organization (city/county/non-profit/etc) should be picked out already.

-review the organization, review the financial profile of the entity using sources/links/discussions/lecture/reading and text materials we have had in this course and other outside sources as well. Review the website and reports and comptroller uploads. You are analyzing for a layperson the financial activities, budget performance, and overall fiscal health of your selected organization.

-questions to consider: how are the priorities and strategic objectives of the entity showing up in how they budget and where they place emphasis? Are things trending up or down? How are reserve levels? Is there a capital budget? Financial solvency concerns? Multi-year budgeting techniques used? Any outside audits available to review and source?