Introduction
This project is aimed at comprehensively helping veterans in Illinois. Table 1 shows the budget plan, which is outlined below. Activities include healthcare services programs, shelters, and other means of addressing homelessness, family reunification, and employment for this group of individuals. This paper analyzes the project budget with an explanation of the numbers taken in the costs.
Table 1: Project Budget
Salary
First of all, this project will require staff who will take responsibility for the main activities outlined in the plan for the organization, management, accounting for financing, evaluation, and planning of further activities. For these activities, it is necessary to resort to the help of a program director, assistant, coordinator, and accountant, not counting professional specialists in the field of construction, mental health, family psychologists, and HR involved on a contract or part-time basis. The average salary of a program director is $58,000 (Indeed, 2022a). The director’s responsibilities will include managing the main areas of the program, in conjunction with the proper supervision and management of the rest of the staff. The coordinator will train and source specialists for specific mental health and veteran family reunification purposes, with an average salary of $32,000 per year (ZipRecruiter, 2022). The program is designed for six months, so these numbers are divided by two in the budget summary.
Finally, the program assistant will be busy coordinating smaller processes under the director’s direction: organizing veterans’ meetings with specialists, searching for appropriate programs, and signing contracts with funding organizations with a salary of 36,000 yearly. All employees will be taken full-time due to the need to achieve results in a short time. Finally, the accountant will control all income and expenses with a possible forecasting calculation to optimize or be relevant for further project development planning; the salary will be 27 thousand for half a year (Indeed, 2022b). Benefits include life insurance for each employee, costing $6,000 for six months.
Healthcare
The engagement of specialists to achieve the goals will include the recruitment of working hours of doctors, family psychologists, and professionals from the field of construction and HR. According to preliminary estimates, the costs will be initially spent on paid consultations with subsequent treatment of veterans by medical specialists. With the tasks set as a percentage, about five thousand veterans should receive support. Expenses must be covered by NGOs, government agencies, or sponsoring organizations, which will be found and analyzed by the director, assistant, and accountant. Grants typically provide up to $120,000 per month for such expenses (Illinois Government, 2022a). The coordinator will conduct training activities to work with families or directly with veterans and search for specialists for specific inquiries about veterans’ health.
Building Houses and Shelters
This project segment is planned to seek funding for the creation of shelters and assistance with affordable housing programs for veterans. Building a shelter with the support of government grants or NGOs can cost about $20,000 (Profitable Venture, 2022). Support, in this case, should be sought from state leaders, who can include this item in their pre-election and current campaigns, contributing to their ratings. It is planned to create up to three such shelters to reach the goal of 40% since, on average, each of them accommodates about 100 people, and at the moment, there are 736 homeless veterans in the state (Veterans Data Central, 2019). The rest of the costs are the responsibility of the assistant and director under the contract, not counting other costs, which will be discussed below.
Jobs
Job search for veterans can be represented as part-time quotas in the form of feasible vacancies for a given group of people. The quota can be allocated to non-profit organizations, government agencies, and subsidies to small and medium-sized businesses. Costs in this area will be like contracts with a potential source of funding from the grant or sponsors. Organizations themselves can sponsor activities by providing such jobs and paying for them with their own hands, without directly funding the project. Government agencies do not disclose financial costs in this area, but support for SMEs exists, as even a targeted resource for veterans has been created (Illinois Government, 2022b). Such activities should be accompanied by the dissemination of this information and control by the director and assistant to ensure that all requirements are met and the provision of benefits to veterans for better integration into society.
Other Expenses
The remaining expenses include transportation of employees and, if necessary, veterans to meet with specialists. About three thousand dollars are allocated for this article, but the cost may change. For six months, $2,500 is allocated for corporate telecommunications between employees and specialists. The marketing activity, which consists in searching for veterans and disseminating information about the necessary services and available services, can reach four thousand dollars, as various media and other channels for distributing the project’s advertising will be involved.
Conclusion
This project is quite ambitious since it is aimed at a relatively high percentage of goals at the end of six months. In this regard, appropriate funding is needed, which is planned to be sought from several sources at once: in the state, business, and NGO sectors. As a result, the state can become one of the veterans friendly regarding most indicators of the problems raised in the project.
References
Glassdoor. (2022). Salary: Program Assistant in Illinois, US. Web.
Illinois Government. (2022a). Veterans’ Cash – Programs. Web.
Illinois Government. (2022b). Veteran Services – IDES. Web.
Indeed. (2022a). Program Director salary in Illinois. Web.
Indeed. (2022b). Accountant salary in Illinois. Web.
Profitable Venture. (2022). How Much Does It Cost to Start a Homeless Shelter in 2022? Web.
Veterans Data Central. (2019). Illinois. Web.
ZipRecruiter. (2022). Wellness Coordinator Salary in Chicago, IL. Web.