CSMFO + GFOA Budget Award Criteria Mapping For Local Governments
By Matt Benati, Vice President of Marketing, ClearGov; and Will Fuentes, Communications Chair and Finance Director for the City of Campbell
As a member of the California Society of Municipal Finance Officers (CSMFO), you are likely aware of their prestigious Budget Awards Program. Additionally, our national public finance organization, the Government Finance Officer Association (GFOA) also has its own Distinguished Budget Presentation Award Program.
Both of these budget awards recognize local governments that display excellence in budgeting, transparency, accountability, and communication to enhance public trust. This is achieved through the annual budget documents that are produced and made available to citizens and subsequently evaluated by CSMFO and GFOA volunteer reviewers.
But preparing your budget document to submit for award consideration can be a time-consuming process. There are a lot of guidelines to consider, requirements to follow, and “nice to haves” to squeeze in that will boost your chance of winning. If you submit your budget book to the CSMFO, you may think you don’t have the time or resources to also submit to the GFOA; and vice versa. Great news! The requirements are nearly identical. If you’re submitting to CSMFO, you may as well submit to GFOA as well.
And how good will those award seals look on your city website — showing your citizens that their government is being recognized and awarded on both the state AND national levels for its commitment to excellence in budgeting!
Let’s take a look at CSMFO and GFOA budget award criteria, and how you can more EASILY build your best budget book ever that automatically meets all requirements from both organizations.
BONUS: We’ve created a criteria mapping of the requirements for each award and put it in a handy spreadsheet to make your life even easier. Find a link to that at the end of this post.
Why Submit Your Budget Book for Award Consideration
Now more than ever, local governments recognize the importance of transparency when it comes to creating their budget and communicating their financial health with their community. They also recognize the need to modernize the budget process, using technology to streamline and automate historical challenges and create a better experience – both internally and for community stakeholders.
When you’re already putting in the work to create an engaging and informative budget book for your community, taking the extra effort to seek recognition from the GFOA and CSMFO is the next natural step. Being recognized by state and national organizations for your government’s excellence in budgeting fosters public trust and demonstrates your commitment to transparency.
The award guidelines for both our organizations are extensive, but the overarching goal is to evaluate how well your budget serves as:
- a policy document
- a financial plan
- an operations guide
- a communications device
About The Awards
GFOA
About the Award: GFOA established the Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards Program (Budget Awards Program) in 1984 to encourage and assist state and local governments to prepare budget documents of the very highest quality that reflect both the guidelines established by the National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting and the GFOA’s best practices on budgeting and then to recognize individual governments that succeed in achieving that goal.
Deadline: GFOA submissions must be received within 90 days of the date when the budget was approved/adopted.
Fees: Fees for the GFOA award are calculated based on size using the same categories for GFOA membership
CSMFO
About the Award: The CSMFO Budget Awards Program is designed to recognize those agencies that have prepared a budget document that meets the highest criteria and standards applied to municipal budgeting.
Deadline: 90 days after the start of the local government’s fiscal year.
Fees: Operating and Capital budget application fee: $150 per electronic submission. $200 per paper submission.
CSMFO vs. GFOA Sections & Categories
Let’s take a quick look at how each of our organizations presents its guidelines:
CSMFO breaks down its guidelines into Section A and Section B questions. If you can answer ‘yes’ to each question, then you’re meeting the organization’s best practices for your budget book. Section A refers to what is needed to obtain a Meritorious Award, while Section B refers to the additional work needed to obtain an Excellence Award.
GFOA breaks down its guidelines and requirements into categories: Communications, Financial, Operations, and Policy.
GFOA & CSMFO Mandatory Inclusions
The GFOA includes 15 criteria that are mandatory for submitting your budget book for award consideration. CSMFO does not designate any of their guidelines as mandatory, but as mentioned earlier, meeting all of the Section A questions earns you the Meritorious Award and meeting the additional Section B questions earns you the Excellence Award.
Including the 15 mandatory GFOA criteria in both your GFOA & CSMFO submissions is a great place to start and will ensure your budget book is solid.
Beyond these requirements, everything else in the guidelines are considered best practices that will continue to improve your budget book even further.
GFOA mandatory requirements include:
1. Table of contents
2. Budget overview
3. Consolidated financial schedule
4. Fund balance
5. Revenues
6. Capital program
7. Debt
8. Organization chart
9. Position summary schedule
10. Departmental/program descriptions
11. Performance measures
12. Strategic goals & strategies
13. Priorities and issues
14. Financial policies
15. Budget process
CSMFO And GFOA Criteria Mapping
Now for that handy spreadsheet we mentioned. You can download the criteria mapping of the CSMFO and GFOA budget award guidelines here.
To read this spreadsheet, look at column G, which shows the equivalent GFOA requirement (Column A) to that particular CSMFO requirement.
For example:
- For CSMFO, Section A asks you to confirm: Is there a table of contents? Are document’s pages numbered?
- This correlates to GFOA’s Section C1 under Communications/Introduction & Overview/Table of Contents, which is a mandatory inclusion.
How To Create and Submit Your Budget Book
Depending on your budgeting process, your final budget documents will take one of these forms:
- PDF-based budget book. Using Excel, Word, and other tools, you can manually create a traditional budget book. They are typically saved as a PDF and are easily hosted on your website or shared via email. They can be easily printed upon request. Because this is a static document, it’s a more in-depth process to make changes, and it may be harder for constituents to easily find the information they’re looking for.
- Web-based budget book. Leveraging a cloud-based budget book solution allows you to automate much of the creation process using templates and data-driven charts and tables. These web-based budget books are easily shared via a website URL, and are usually available to download/print as a PDF as well. Web-based budget books are highly customizable, and the interactive nature allows constituents to quickly find the information they’re looking for and manipulate charts to view the data in a way that makes sense to them.
When it comes to submitting your budget book for GFOA and CSMFO award consideration, there are a couple things to note:
- GFOA – The GFOA allows you to mail in a hard copy of your budget documents, upload a PDF, or include the URL for a web-based budget book.
- CSMFO – For California municipalities submitting a budget book to CSMFO, you must mail in a hard copy or upload a PDF
If you’re a local government in California, and plan to submit your budget book for CSMFO consideration, there’s no reason to stop there. Submit to GFOA as well. Build public trust and demonstrate your commitment to transparency by achieving state and national recognition for your excellence in budgeting.
Matt Benati is Vice President of Marketing for ClearGov®, a leading provider of Budget Cycle Management software for local governments. Matt is passionate about helping organizations modernize their annual budgeting process by automating workflow, increasing collaboration, and improving transparency between governments and citizens.
Will Fuentes, Finance Director for the City of Campbell, CA, has served in various public sector finance roles for the past 24 years and is a double graduate of the University of Notre Dame (IN) with a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Finance and a Master of Business Administration (MBA). He has been the Finance Director for the City of Campbell (CA) since 2019. Will was also a Board Member for the California Society of Municipal Finance Officers (CSMFO), obtained his Certified Public Finance Officer (CPFO) designation from the Government Finance Officer Association (GFOA), and served as a voluntary Budget Program reviewer for GFOA for many years. Will has a passion for leveraging technology to increase transparency and understandability of public sector financial data and has experience implementing Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) and budgeting systems and developing personnel costing modules.
