Return to previous section of the toolkit: Project partnerships
Project budgets often comprise:
- Grant funding – funders will always have criteria that limits how money can be spent and the types of activity required. While it is always tempting to chase the money you do need to ask if it is a good fit for what you wish to achieve. In many cases grants are also given as a proportion of your total budget. Therefore, if you are expecting other income it is important to be sure this is secured, otherwise if you fall short then you also have to cut proportionally what you spend.
- Cash matched funding – as noted above, many grant funders require matched funding. Even if matched funding is not mandatory, if you can provide any funds from other sources it often demonstrates commitment and may also enhance and give more flexibility on what you can achieve.
- In-kind contributions can enhance the value of a project but be careful to ensure that these activities are practical and are needed. For example, it is tempting to count partners attending meetings as in-kind but in reality, though useful, they do not help fund the delivery of core tasks or activities. Typical in-kind activity might be volunteer time working on and delivering project activities; your staff or a project partner’s time delivering an activity; waiving of fees such as room hire or reproduction; recruitment and payroll; design and graphics.
What to include in a budget?
Capital e.g.
- Display equipment, IT hardware
- Conservation and materials
- Physical storage
Labour e.g.
- Staff costs, including new posts
- Consultants
- Creative practitioners
- Designers
- Supply teacher costs
- Evaluation – external evaluator
Revenue e.g.
- Staff expenses e.g. travel
- Volunteer expenses – out of pocket and travel expenses to enable more people to volunteer
- Staff and volunteer training – this might include practical skills such as curation and exhibition design; and soft skills such as IT, research, cataloguing and indexing
- Marketing materials, printing etc.
- Exhibition materials
- IT software, websites, apps etc. (can also be included in consultants’ fees)
- Hospitality – especially for volunteers, end of project celebrations
- Venue / room hire
- Contingency – essential for any project
- Inflation – important to make allowance for this
Grant funding beyond National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Although the National Lottery Heritage Fund is the key funder for heritage-based projects, there are a range of grant funding opportunities that may be available to Local Studies services or community projects. A good place to start is the Good Things Foundation database which has a list of a range of funders:
Good Things Foundation UK grants database
Other sources of funding
More information on other ways to raise funding can be found in two other sections of the toolkit:
Got something to add?
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CILIP Local Studies Group 