Leading a STM Medical Team

Mid Pre-Trip Tasks

Budget, Part II

In this phase of trip planning and prior to the start of team meetings, the budget development continues. As decisions are made about air travel and as the details of the logistics and the medical/evangelism activities become known, the individual lines of the budget can be completed.

See Budget, Part I for the initial section related to Budget development. Here let's consider the budget tool itself.

There are many ways to develop a budget for a team. The one presented here has worked well for us. There are major sections for Expenses and Income. Within each of these there are line items. Some are per person and some are for the whole team. For instance, airfare is given per person, while costs of medicines are given per team. This way of expressing items allows you as the team leader to estimate the total costs of the trip for different sized-teams and allows you then to give team members a reasonable estimate of their share of cost. As different line items become better known, you can replace estimates with the exact cost and get a closer and closer estimate of the final cost.

At some point, you need to give team members a final cost. Usually this is by the first or second team meeting. It almost always involves some degree of best guess-timate as many costs may not be known. Also, income from sources other than team members' fees may change as the trip date approaches.

In the section Budget, Part III we'll discuss fund-raising by the team or by individuals.

Downloads and links available:

1. Sample budget
2. Visa information
3. Travel agent
4. Travel Insurance

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