We've always been a bit ad-hoc about how we present core costs, and/or overheads, and/or staff costs in grant applications. Of course, this is partly dependent on funder guidelines of what sort of costs they will and won't accept. But when there is potential to put a FCR bid in, we work it out from scratch every time, which is time consuming and can lead to errors. I'd like to create a basic apportionment model that, regardless of what the actual figures are, means the working out used to create the budget line is consistent.

Of course, the short answer is that everyone does it differently, and there is no “correct” way to go about it or a one-size-fits-all approach. As a starting point, I wouldn’t be including staffing in this as we tend to work out an actual proportion of direct, and directly allocated, staff that will be allocated to a project and get a cost from finance. But I’m talking about a model to apportion core operational costs such as rates, insurance, utilities, indirect staff costs eg shared organisational costs such as finance, HR, etc,.

I’ve got some example models from other charities, including from a previous role of my own, but I’m keen to gather more information to help us figure out what sort of system will work best for us, so would be really grateful if anyone felt able to share an overview of their model/process.