Creating budgets for Trust Applications

I'll agree with everything Sandre's just said - I would add that, if you have anybody in your organisation who is doing stuff not related to the delivery of your mission, then you should get rid of them!

We often hear that "core costs" basically include the Director of the organisation and their office - but if they are not helping deliver the mission, then they are an expensive luxury.

If the staff costs you are applying for really are working with service users, then I would be inclined to express the need in terms of the number of service users, the hours of service or the needs met.

If, however, you are CLAIMING that it's staff costs, when in reality it's not, stop it at once! Trust funding is Restricted, and MUST be spent on what it was given for.

That's not to say you can't select the most fundable bits of your work to build a bid, but don't get in to distorting your project to get funding - it's illegal, and if the funder finds out they'll want their money back!

Cheers

Gerry

Gerry Beldon FInstF
Director, 26-01 CIC
www.26-01.com

To me, a lot of a project breakdown is made uo figures.
You may know or have a good idea of what the staff costs are, what the running costs currently are and so on. Though there can often be variables that are more slippery.

Here's how I do my project applications.
I start off saying who we are and asking for £1,000 towards the meal project cost. First paragraph, indeed 2nd sentence.
Then new paragraph about what, why, how much and so on. Ending with outcomes.
Sometimes I mix things around, but I try and keep what, why, how much and outcomes in every application unless they specify what they want.

The cost listing can be.

Income from meals £3,460

Costs
Cook £8,158
Management £2,500
Running costs £1,900
Support £259
Food costs £4,361
Office costs £80
Cleaning £1,434
Governance £117
Sundry £187
Fundraising £921
Equipment £1,000

Total £20,917

Total needed £17,457

Apologies for any formatting errors, this is copied over from a document.

The only true and accurate figure there is Cook, for the cook's salary and on-costs. The Cook being the one member of staff wholly working on one project only.
Everything else is a percentage of other costs or estimated figures. Its as accurate as we can get it, but 5% of this cost and 10% of that cost to cover relevant costs for this project are pretty arbitary.

Never tried including some of those costs but I have been told by a couple of funders that they occasionally will pay for a specific portion of the project (for example, cleaning or equipment).

Oh, and this project has high cleaning costs due to both the kitchen and dining area (our largest and messiest room) taking up a good chunk of total cleaning.

Martin <><

If the trust has given any guidance in its guidelines - then follow that. Sorry if that sounds like a no-brainer, but as manager of a grant-making trust I can tell you that we see some absolutely terrible financials.

If there is no guidance:

What you send to a trust should depend on how much you are asking for - if a small amount compared with the whole budget, I would think that specifying exactly what that would pay for would suffice. For a larger amount, I would want to see the budget for the whole project (or the organisation if it's a small organisation) making it absolutely crystal clear which bits of it you are asking for from us and which bits you are funding from elsewhere. Be specific about your other sources - even if they are not confirmed yet, it's a good idea to list applications/amount/status. Reason for this is that many trusts 'don't want to be first'. We don't mind being first, but if the project was of potential interest to the trustees, I would still want to know where the other funding for the project/organisation might be coming from, whether agreement on our part might make a difference to success of these applications, etc. I'd be pretty unhappy if our 'first up' cash was sat in the organisation's bank account doing nothing for 6 months before they started work because they hadn't even applied to any other funders. We'd rather the money was somewhere else and working already.

While I'm here - your informant was correct: *never* apply to a trust for "core costs" (hearing those words makes me feel quite violent). Even if the trust itself uses those words, it's really shorthand to say "We'll consider anything you need to make this work happen - but we still need to know exactly what that is". Trusts don't specify these things because it leads some people to get a bit excited and apply for stuff that they don't actually really need simply because we say we'll pay for it (cynical but true). You do need to be specific though.

The standard core costs rant (regular readers switch off here ...): If a cost is necessary to run your activity, it's core. In other words, *everything* is a core cost. If a member of staf is is working with beneficiaries then their salary (or part of it, proportional to time spent in deliver) is not a 'core cost', it's a project or delivery cost. Staff salaries for management/admin and other expenses/office space are not 'core costs', they are overheads or support costs (NB: you'll find as many uses of terminology as there are organisations sorry - this is personal opinion/usage rather than industry standard, although I hope and believe you'll find that my definitions will be understood by most!). See http://www.fullcostrecovery.org.uk/main/index.php?content=home for more detail.

HTH

Sandre
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