Managing Financial Resources for Human Services Organizations Essay

Managing Financial Resources for Human Services Organizations - Essay Example raise strong and healthy children by strengthening our investment in Head Start, teen pregnancy prevention and abstinence education; increasing opportunities for adoption; and bolstering our efforts to reduce tobacco and drug abuse among youth; It creates a strong public health agenda for the next century by sustaining biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, developing a new food safety initiative, combating infectious diseases and providing life-extending drug therapies to people with AIDS; Additionally, the budget provides funds to allow these organizations he option to extend one year of continuous Medicaid coverage to children, thus increasing continuity and security for children and families and reducing administrative burdens on States, families, and health care plans which now have to determine eligibility on a monthly basis. â€Å"The definition of a line-item is the classification of expenditures on the basis of categories called objects-of-expenditure (personnel services, contractual services, capital outlay, etc.) and within each category more detailed line-items (salaries, travel, telephones, etc.). This type of budget focuses attention on how much money is spent and for what purpose rather than the activity affected or its outcomes.† (Elsass. Financial Management in Local Government: Frequently used Terms, 2001). It is easiest to build performance-based budgets on the foundation of a program-based budget system. Under performance, or â€Å"outcome-based budgets†, each major program or function is measured using a set of benchmarks. Benchmarks are snap shots of particular activities or functions at a beginning date and time. These benchmarks are used for comparison purposes to measure progress in attaining specific program or functional goals over periods of time (i.e., six months, a year, or several years). Programs, activities, and functions may also be measured quantitatively and qualitatively against other internal and