FREE FUNDING ADVICE AVAILABLE!

Funding is the major issue for local voluntary and community sector groups and organisations. People want to know not only where to go to obtain funding but also what they can use the funding for and how they can apply for it.

DVC has produced a Funding Advice Pack to help groups and organisations with all the basic questions about obtaining funding. The pack contains information about local statutory funders, as well as the major charitable Trusts and foundations that have fund groups in this area. It also includes useful websites and information about how to set out a funding application and what information funders will be looking for. For your FREE copy please contact us

If you would like more in depth help with your funding issues, such as help with writing applications or completing an application form or maybe some training on using the Directories of Charitable Trusts you can make an appointment to see the Outreach Support Worker, Mal Thompson, who will be happy to come to your group or organisation. You can contact Mal at the Volunteer Centre.

Are you calculating the full costs of your project when you make funding applications?

Many of us in the voluntary sector are aware that it is harder to obtain grant funding for ‘core costs’ as opposed to ‘project costs’. Many voluntary sector organisations have tended to focus on direct costs, raising little or no funding towards core costs. As a result the traditional picture of the voluntary sector involves underfunded projects; the arbitrary use of percentages to calculate overheads, typically 10% or 12%, which bear no relationship to actual costs of services and short term fixes for funding the overheads which cannot be sustainable. In any service delivery – whether provided by a voluntary, public or private organisation –it is sound economic practice for an organisation to recover its full costs and ideally generate a surplus in order to have a sustainable future.

Two and a half years ago (April 2006) the Government set a deadline for statutory funders to include core costs in any project or service they were funding, and now 8 out of 13 government departments will fund overheads. However, this practice is not widespread among other funders and many Charitable Trusts and Foundations actually state that they will not fund core costs.

Futurebuiders and the Big Lottery are two of the leading funders that do encourage us to submit properly costed bids, and there is a move nationally, from umbrella organisations such as acevo, to help more voluntary sector groups to adopt a full cost recovery model.

We need all funders to recognise that the total costs of running the organisation - the overheads - are not separable from the project work that they fund.

It seems easy enough to list and cost the major direct costs of the project or service ( although it is common for depreciation and IT maintenance to be left out) but what about the major indirect costs – or overheads? How many of us include a proportion of all of the following?

• Manager’s salary
• Rent
• Running costs
• Accountants costs
• AGM costs
• Management
• Committee costs
• Fundraiser costs
• Administration costs
• Office cleaning

How do you calculate the proportion? Do you guess or use a percentage figure?

In the Full Cost Recovery model the proportion of rent, for example, can be calculated based on the amount of floor space each person uses so if there are 3 people sharing an office and two of those are project workers, then the proportion of rent as an overhead would be 2/3rds of the total cost.

Some people are worried that they won’t get sufficient funding to cover all these costs, but by calculating the real costs of a project it will be easy to identify where the shortfall is, and how additional funding needs to be raised from other sources.

We need to be showing funders how much each project or service really costs if we want to create sustainability.

If you would like to explore this further, then you can make an appointment to talk to Mal Thompson, Daventry Volunteer Centre Development Worker. Contact us or emailing Mal direct at: