What is it and why do you need to know about it?

A typical problem for day centres, and for any small voluntary sector organisation, is securing funding for running costs, or 'overheads'. Typically, funders have only been interested only in contributing to direct costs of projects rather than overheads or core funding. This has lead to underinvestment in management and leadership, internal and external infrastructure, strategic development and governance. This shortsightedness, however, only makes day centres and the important services that they deliver, including public services, unsustainable.

Full cost recovery (FCR) has been developed by government, funders and voluntary sector organisations as a solution. It means that organisations and their funders ensure that the price of contracts and grants reflects the full costs of delivery, including the legitimate portion of overhead costs. FCR enables organisations to fund themselves more sustainably, but there is also a burden on them to cost their projects and services on an accurate, defensible and sustainable basis.

ACEVO's full cost recovery website points out that HM Treasury first endorsed the principle of Full Cost Recovery in its 2002 cross cutting review, "The role of the voluntary sector in service delivery". The review stated that "Funders should recognise that it is legitimate for providers to include the relevant element of overheads in their cost estimates for providing a given service under service agreement or contract." It's now widely accepted that FCR is good practice for grant-giving organisations, and should be implemented by all statutory funders, including the Big Lottery funds.

Where to find out about FCR

There are several really excellent online resources out there detailing the principles of full cost recovery and providing practical advice as to how to go about costing for it:

• New Philanthropy Capital has a downloadable Excel toolkit which includes not only an excellent account of the theory and priciples of FCR but also includes a spreadsheet tool which helps you calculate the full cost of projects.

• ACEVO runs a full cost recovery project, which includes a guide and training courses.

• CASH Online also has resources on full cost recovery available online.

What is it and why do you need to know about it?

Underfunding of the voluntary sector is hardly a new problem, so there are tons and tons of resources out there designed to help you develop sustainable funding practices for your organisation.

NCVO Sustainable Funding Project

The National Community and Voluntary Organisation runs a sustainable funding project which provides tools and resources for organisations looking to implement a sustainable funding approach. While this guidance is not specific to day centres, it includes particularly good guides for putting together a business plan, making a budget and other important sustainable funding skills.

You can download the Introductory Pack to Funding and Finance, which is make up of 6 guides, here:

• Sustainable Funding
• Financial Management
• Fundraising
• Trading
• Procurement and Contracting
• Loans and Other Forms of Finance

Make sure to also visit the Sustainable Funding Project main website, which has links to other resources, events and publications, as well as a sustainable funding newsletter.

Community Development Foundation Factsheets

The CDF has produced some great quick reference factsheets on Applying for funds, Funding research, and Developing a funding strategy. They have also published a guide entitled Setting up for success, available to purchase from their website.

Finance Hub

Finance Hub has a section of its website dedicated to funding resources. These include downloadable guides and toolkits, and an online tool to suggest ways in which you could improve your funding mix. See the Finance Hub website for more.

What is it and why do you need to know about it?

As explained in our Monitoring and Evaluation resource (which you are strongly encouraged to have a look at), being able to show the outcomes of your work is crucial to funders these days. Copied from the M&E resources page, here are a few guides and sites that will help you develop monitoring and evaluation procedures and convert the results into reports for funders.

Where to find out more

• Monitoring and Evaluation for day centres in this resource!
• The Big Lottery fund outcomes guidance is full of tips useful not only for your lottery grants, but for other funders as well.

• Civicus Monitoring and Evaluation toolkit - aimed at international development organisations, but still a useful resource.

• Monitoring and Evaluation News - a useful website with all the latest news on monitoring and evaluation as well as links to events, research and publications and networks.

• New Philanthropy Capital report on stardardised reports : this report looks at how some organisations in Scotland started making startdised reports for all funders, taking into account all the monitoring requirements for each funder. This would be especially useful for day centres, since the report found that small grants actually took up the most resources in terms of reporting.

• First Steps in Monitoring and Evaluation : a guide published by the Charities Evaluation Service, and a good introduction.

• A guide to measuring soft outcomes and distance travelled published by the Institute for Employment Studies.

What is it and why do you need to know about it?

There are many training courses about available that day centre staff might find helpful, ranging from fundraising training to how to deal with difficult situations at your centre.It's always important to make sure your staff have the right skills for the job, so don't neglect their professional training.

The John Laing Charitable Trust Training Bursary Scheme for Day Centres

Homeless Link is running a bursary programme for the staff of small day centre to attend our training courses. The aim of the programme is to enable day centre staff from under-resourced organisations to develop their skills and provide better services. So, if you would work for a day centre with a turnover of less than £100,000 p.a. and would like to go on a Homeless Link training course, download an application form for the John Laing Charitable Trust Bursary Scheme. To see details of what training courses are available, click here. Please note that the application process is ongoing and there is a limited number of places for this programme. For more information, contact Janis Ridsdel.

Funding for Day Centres Workshop

We'll be running a special fundraising for day centres workshop at our annual conference (8 - 10 July) this year. The conference is themed Connecting with Communities, and the day centre workshop, held on 9 July 2008, will cover Local Area Agreement funding as well as solutions for smaller day centres. We'll look at the real experiences of day centres as well as examining different possibilities and resources for fundraising. For more information about the conference and for an online booking form, visit the Connecting with Communities page.

Day Centre Training

Homeless Link runs a training course specifically for day centres - Day centres: places of acceptance, empowerment and change .

This is an interactive and supportive course that looks at recent changes and practical solutions to the challenges faced by managers of day centres. The course will challenge managers to consider their centres as "places of change", and will offer guidance and discussion around juggling the demands of your team, your service users, your organisation, your funders, and the local community.

This course is available training through Homeless Link’s short course programme and can be delivered directly to your organisation as in-house training. Open courses are currently scheduled for 9 September 2008 in Manchester, and 30 March 2009 in London.

Other Training Courses

Homeless Link runs many other useful training courses for staff working in the homelessness sector that would be highly relevant to day centres. These include:

• Arrears prevention: setting people up to maintain tenancies
• Difficult, disturbing and dangerous behaviour
• Motivational interviewing
• Getting homeless people into education and employment
• How to manage and prevent evictions

and more!

For a full listing, visit our training pages .

Fundraising training

The Institute of Fundraising offers many excellent fundraising training courses as well as other resources.

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