Have the budget and start date columns defined this way -
<asp:boundfield datafield="Budget" headertext="Budget" sortexpression="Budget" dataformatstring="{0:C}" ></asp:boundfield>
<asp:boundfield datafield="StartDate" headertext="StartDate" sortexpression="StartDate" dataformatstring="{0:d}" >
</asp:boundfield>
IMHO, this is better than having the display formatting on the DAL.