BTHE BARATELLI INSTITUTE · Mentoring at Scale
FOR EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS · CFOs · DEVELOPMENT DIRECTORS · HOSPITAL-ADJACENT FAMILY HOUSING NONPROFITS

What does it actually cost to host a family for one night?

The unit-economics number every nonprofit board asks about and most house managers can't cleanly answer. Direct variable cost, allocated facility & staffing, overhead, capital reserve — all in one fully-loaded per-family-night number. The figure that anchors the case statement, the donor ask, and the board conversation about whether the model works.

Fully Loaded
All-in per-night
Direct Only
Marginal next family
vs Hotel
Value comparison
Donor Ask
Case-statement number
YOUR HOUSE
1
Facility & capacity
2
Direct variable costs
3
Allocated fixed costs
4
Overhead & capital reserve
5
Recommendations & math
STAGE 1 OF 5

Facility & capacity setup

Defaults are typical for a mid-size hospital-adjacent family housing facility (~24 family rooms, ~78% occupancy, single-night-or-longer stays for patient families).

Used as context only — cost stack is driven by your numbers, not by region.
Sleeping rooms / family suites. Typical hospital-adjacent house: 12-60 rooms.
Annualized average — accounts for turnover days, deep-clean gaps, off-peak periods. Well-run houses: 70-88%.
%
Auto-computed as rooms × 365 × occupancy %. Override only if your tracking measures differently (e.g. partial-stay nights, multi-family suites).
Context for the development narrative — long-stay houses (oncology, NICU, transplant) often average 14-45 nights per family.
Slider input for the comparison panel — typical near children's hospital: $120-280. Use a Hampton Inn / Courtyard equivalent, not luxury.
$
What this tool actually answers. Boards and development teams ask the same question two different ways: "What does it cost us per night?" (board) and "What does a donor's gift buy?" (development). They want the same number from different angles. This tool builds it from the bottom up — direct variable cost, allocated facility and staffing, overhead, capital reserve — so the case statement and the audit committee see the same math.
STAGE 2 OF 5

Direct variable costs (per night)

The cost the next family-night actually adds. These scale 1-for-1 with occupied rooms — if a family doesn't check in, you don't incur them.

Sheets, towels, blankets, laundry chemicals + utilities. Typical: $3-8/night.
$
Soap, shampoo, paper goods, welcome kit consumables. Typical: $2-5/night.
$
The marginal water + electricity + gas of an occupied vs vacant room. Fixed-base utility goes in Stage 3. Typical incremental: $4-9.
$
Pantry stock, snacks, community-meal ingredients per family-night. If no meal program, set low or zero. Full meal: $8-20.
$
Disinfectants, deep-clean chemicals between stays, gloves, masks. Allocate per occupied night for simplicity.
$
Parking validation, transit passes, family welcome bags, anything else you absorb per occupied night.
$
Why direct cost matters separately. The fully-loaded number anchors the case statement and the donor ask. The direct number answers a different and equally important question: "If we say yes to one more family tonight, what does it cost us?" When the hospital social worker calls at 9pm, that's the math you need.
STAGE 3 OF 5

Allocated fixed costs (per year)

Annual costs spread across family-nights served. These keep the doors open whether one room is occupied or twenty-four. Enter annual totals — we divide by family-nights to get the allocation.

Facilities
Building debt service or rent. Mortgage-free houses enter $0 here and shift the implicit cost to capital reserve.
$
Property, liability, D&O. Often higher than executive directors expect — $20-60K for a 20-30 room facility.
$
If applicable. Many nonprofits are exempt — but PILOT (payment-in-lieu) is common in some jurisdictions.
$
Lobby, kitchen, laundry, HVAC base load — the utility you pay even at 0% occupancy.
$
HVAC service, plumbing, pest control, landscaping, small-dollar fixes. Major capex is in Stage 4 reserve.
$
Monitoring, card-access maintenance, after-hours staffing premium if applicable.
$
Staffing (loaded — salary + benefits)
Base + payroll tax + benefits + retirement. ~1.3× base for full load.
$
Combined total across assistant managers / night managers if you have them.
$
In-house housekeeping team total. Contracted services count here too.
$
Social-work-adjacent role, family check-in, programming support. Often a 0.5-1.0 FTE blended.
$
Programs & family services
Holiday programs, family dinners hosted by volunteer groups, sibling activities, peer-support programming.
$
Hospital shuttle van — fuel, insurance, driver if paid. If volunteer-driven, count only fuel + insurance.
$
Volunteer onboarding, background checks, recognition. The infrastructure that lets your volunteer hours actually function.
$
CRM, family tracking, occupancy software, donor database allocated portion.
$
STAGE 4 OF 5

Overhead & capital reserve

The two lines most operational P&Ls under-count. Allocated overhead is real money — fundraising and G&A keep the program running. Capital reserve is the difference between a house that lasts and one that limps.

Why this stage matters. The single most common error in nonprofit unit-cost reporting is allocating overhead at 0% and capital reserve at 0% — and then claiming the per-family-night cost is the direct + facilities number. It isn't. The BBB Wise Giving Standard expects 65% of expenses to be program; that means 35% is overhead (fundraising + G&A) by industry expectation. Show it on the math and the conversation changes.
Allocated overhead
Allocated portion of fundraising cost. BBB Wise Giving Standard: fundraising should be ≤ 35% of related contributions. Typical mid-size houses: 12-20% of direct program cost.
%
Allocated portion of executive, finance, board governance. Typical: 8-15% of direct program cost. Higher for smaller orgs.
%
Capital reserve (the line everyone skips)
Furniture, fixtures, equipment refresh — mattresses, dressers, paint, soft goods. $200-500/room/year sustains a long-term facility.
$
% of facilities cost set aside annually for major capex (roof, HVAC system, electrical). Industry standard: 5-10% of facilities cost.
%
Break-even scenario (donor / sponsor risk)
If you lost this annual sponsorship, what would the dev team need to replace? Used in the break-even recommendation.
$
Average mid-tier individual gift used to calculate how many donors would be needed to backfill the sponsor.
$
STAGE 5 OF 5

Recommendations & math

Your fully-loaded number, your direct-only number, your hotel comparison, and the donor-facing language development teams need.

HERE — TRY THESE. THEY MAY HELP.

Per-family-night cost is one piece of the nonprofit unit-economics stack.

The Family Office Guide covers the donor-side workflows; the in-development Executive Philanthropic Director Guide covers the program-side discipline including unit-cost reporting standards, functional expense allocation, joint-cost rules, and the case-statement architecture that converts unit economics into board confidence and donor commitment.

Family Office Guide EPD Guide All free tools
Practitioner reference. Outputs are estimates based on user inputs. Run with your actual numbers; cross-check with your accountant and auditor for 990 functional expense allocation and joint-cost reporting under SOP 98-2. Overhead allocation methods can materially shift the per-unit number — the rates here are illustrative defaults, not audit-defensible allocations. This is not financial, tax, or legal advice.
WANT THE METHODOLOGY BEHIND THIS TOOL?
This calculator pairs with Family Office Guide and the Executive Philanthropic Director Guide.
The tool gives you the per-family-night number. The guides give you the surrounding workflow — donor cultivation cadence, major-gift conversation architecture, case-statement design, functional-expense allocation discipline under SOP 98-2, and the unit-economics reporting standards that turn a raw number into an audit-ready disclosure and a board-confidence story.
Methodology references: FO Guide Ch 9 (Philanthropy operating model), EPD Guide Ch 4 (Program unit-cost reporting), CPA-in-a-Box Module 12 (Nonprofit functional expense & 990 Schedule G).
Read the Family Office Guide → Browse all guides
PROFESSIONAL DISCLAIMER · PLEASE READ

Educational and informational purposes only. This calculator and any output it produces are intended solely for general educational and decision-support purposes. They do not constitute investment, tax, legal, accounting, appraisal, lending, insurance, or any other professional advice, and they do not create a fiduciary, attorney-client, accountant-client, or advisor-client relationship of any kind.

Estimates based on your inputs. All results are estimates derived from the data and assumptions you provide. Tax law, accounting standards (including FASB ASC 958, joint-cost allocation under AICPA SOP 98-2, and IRS Form 990 functional-expense reporting), regulations, and the specific facts of your situation can materially change the answer. Overhead and capital-reserve allocations used in this tool are illustrative defaults — they are not a substitute for an audit-ready functional-expense methodology. The Baratelli Institute, its affiliates, and any co-branding professional make no warranty of accuracy, completeness, currency, or fitness for any particular purpose, and disclaim all liability for decisions made in reliance on the output.

Consult your own qualified professionals. Before acting on anything calculated here, consult your own attorney, CPA, financial advisor, appraiser, lender, or other qualified professional licensed in your jurisdiction who has reviewed your specific facts and applicable current law. The Baratelli Institute is a publisher of practitioner reference material. It is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, law firm, accounting firm, appraisal firm, or lender.

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