Purpose:
Make budget planning easier for the grant-funded community.
Context:
Research labs and nonprofits need to fulfill the objectives of their grants while also ensuring that team members get paid and the organization as a whole continues to operate. The more grants there are, the more complicated this financial equation becomes.
It often falls on overworked principal investigators and executive directors to make strategic decisions by juggling budget spreadsheets, past spending reports, and intuition. With these ad-hoc systems, significant financial problems often go unnoticed until it's too late — leading to unnecessary layoffs, cuts, and even bankruptcy.
Approach:
Spend Lab displays each income stream and expense stream as compact stacked timelines so that users can see the whole budget plan at a glance. Expenses and grant parameters can be created and adjusted directly on the timeline, making data entry efficient and errors easy to spot.
All calculations are performed automatically and in real time, instantly highlighting funding gaps, grant expirations, and other issues so that they can be addressed early.
Feedback:
"It actually makes budgeting fun… I didn’t think I would ever say that."
"I've come to realize that Spend Lab is more than a budgeting tool — it's a way to unite the silos between researchers and administrators."
Website:
Sketch:
