Jargon: Burn Rate
Meaning: How much a development project spends each month, or each year. You need to keep an eye on your burn rate to make sure that you’re not going to be overspent by the end of your project or not spend all your money and have to give it back to the donor (and do less work than you could have.)
Jargon: Leverage
Translation: Officially, it means to use one kind of funding as a way to inspire other donors. So you could leverage a $500 donation by getting a foundation to match it, and have $1000. In practice, though, it just means to use multiple funding streams to fund one project, whether or not the later funds were donated because of the first ones. NGOs claim all the time that they are leveraging your donation when what they really mean is “combining with other kinds of money.”