Find Funding

It’s one thing to have the vision to work in schools, but another to be able to find the funding to do it. Christian organisations regularly struggle to get the income they need to pay for staff and all the other costs involved. In this guide, we explore the different options available for churches,organisations and individuals who want to find funding to work in education.

Starting points

It’s important to realise that the kind of work being done in schools will impact the different sources of funding available.  Few grant-making trusts in the UK, for example, will fund explicitly Christian work that seeks to present faith in assemblies or RE lessons. For projects concentrating on this kind of work, other sources of income will need to be found. However, working pastorally with children and young people or providing anger management programmes may make finding grants a more likely possibility.  It can be tempting to find yourself adapting and changing your project to fit a grant and ending up well financed but doing something you realise you don’t really want to do. Keep your project aims in mind as you seek funding and make sure you hold true to your vision and objectives.

Five questions to ask yourself first

• Where do you get your money from at present? Divide up your income into different segments and calculate the percentage each makes up of the total.
• How has that changed? Do the same for the last three years and track what’s changed. Do you know why?
• What kind of risks are attached to where you get your income? If you get more than 20% from a single source, then you need to recognise the risk attached… losing that income could impact your viability?
• What work are you doing in schools? List the types of work you do (curriculum input, pastoral care etc) and allocate a percentage to each to represent how much time is given to it.
• What areas would you like to work in? If you had unlimited funds, what would be the first three things you’d do?

Use your answers to these questions to shape your plans for finding funding, whether that’s increasing the amount you receive from a current source or finding new funding from scratch.

Sources of income: Donations from individuals and churches

Donations, often from local Christians, are the most common way a schools project is funded. They’re important not only because of the income they provide, but because they strengthen and develop support for the project and connections with churches. As a result, many projects work hard to encourage this kind of giving.

Regular giving through standing order or direct debit which is often monthly but which can also be quarterly (every three months) or annually.  This is a vital source of funding because it gives the security of known income and allows projects to budget more accurately. Donations can be set up as a standing order or direct debit and are often monthly, although any period can be chosen.  Although donations from local Christians (and others) are important, there is a limit to how far they can cover the costs of funding a schools project. For example, a project with two schools workers might have expenditure of around £60,000 (£30,000 per worker is a good general guide to cover salary and other staff and running costs). Most regular donations tend to be around £10 per month.

At that rate, a project would need to have 500 donors signed up to meet their costs! Although this doesn’t include tax relief and the fact that some donors may give more, it does show that individual donations alone are unlikely to meet the full costs of running a project.

What is the difference between standing orders and direct debits?

With standing orders, you are giving your bank or building society an instruction to pay a certain individual/institution’s bank account a set sum at regular intervals - usually monthly, but also weekly, quarterly or annually. The sum cannot change unless you cancel the existing instruction and set up a new one. It generally takes around three working days for the money to arrive in the recipient’s bank account and the process is usually free, though some banks may charge.

A direct debit is an authorisation from a customer to allow a particular institution to collect sums from his/her bank account, provided that institution gives advance notice of the collection times and amounts. In most cases the date and the sum will be regular and unchanging - such as with regular direct debits to utility companies or credit card providers. However amounts can also be varied when required: increasing amounts in line with inflation, for example. Payment by direct debit is also instant - there is no waiting period while payment is verified by the bank. It is basically the equivalent of paying by debit card.

Setting up a standing order is much easier for smaller projects as there will be no cost involved and it’s simply a matter of producing your own form (with certain essential information included) which donors send to their banks. Direct debits usually involve a fee payable to the company that handles and administers them as well as setting up your bank account to receive them. This can be anywhere between 30p and 70p per debit plus a monthly administration fee to the company. On the positive side, most people are much more familiar with direct debits than standing orders, and they can even be paperless and set up via your web site. Some companies operate as a ‘middle man’ in this process, where donors give regularly to them by direct debit and the company then passes on the donation (minus a handling charge) to the organisation who then don’t have to set themselves up to receive direct debits. Stewardship Services is an example of a Christian company operating in this field.