I am treasurer of a charity and have applied to the reaching communities programme of the BLF for funding for a project which will involve people with learning difficulties organising conferences etc. for similar people. Through this it is intended that they will gain confidence in running their own lives and other skills as a result of the planning process. We will employ a paid worker to help them to do this. It is intended that the conferences will be basically self financing but I have included a sum of £5000 in my budget as we will subsidise some attendees and also as a contingency for unforeseen conferencecosts. For example the conferences might cost £35,000 but we will only receive £30,000 in fees from the participants. The BLF budget form asks for
Total project costs (a)
Funding from other sources (b)
Amount requested from BLF(c)= (a-b)
My question is how should I show the conference costs and income on the budget form:
1. as £5,000 under (a) or
2. as £35000 under (a), £30,000 under (b) and £5000 under (c)
The background is that I included the £5000 as a net figure in the budget for the initial application form where it didn't specifically show up. as only total costs are required. The BLF are now saying that I should have adopted option 2. which will mean that the total project costs will be more than 25% greater than in the initial application which is not acceptable to the BLF and they wil throw out our application.
Iam not aware of any guidance from the BLF as to what goes under each heading. I had assumed that funds from other sources referred to grants from other charities or monies which we had raised ourselves.
Can anyone offer any help on this please?
John Price