Where does all your money come from, and how is it spent?
Charities are often scrutinised about their accounts and financial position. Here at The Parish Trust, we strive to be as open and transparent as possible with our money.
The money receive comes from four sources:
- Grants, which make up the majority of our income in any given year
- Contracts/Service work – where we are asked to deliver a service on behalf of another organisation or institution. This is very rare.
- Our own fundraising activities (such as Bag a Bargain, and the other clubs we run)
- Donations from the General Public
Donations from the General Public are always directed to the frontline work of our organisation, or to the things that donors themselves restrict the giving to via specific appeals etc.
Our own fundraising income is distributed where need is greatest in the organisation.
With Grant Funding, this is more complex. Grant Funders either provide unrestricted funding which means that the grant can be used however the charity sees fit, or, in most cases, grant funding is restricted, and is only to be used for specific purposes.
Within those two main categories of restricted and unrestricted funding, there are two other categories: capital and revenue.
Capital funding is for equipment and one-off costs to get something started. Revenue funding is the ongoing funding needed to keep a project or organisation going.
So, for example, a grant funder may provide a restricted grant for capital purchases that enhance technology within the organisation. This funding would not be able to buy food for our CARE Project, and it would not be able to be spent on salaries of our staff. But it would be able to be used to buy a Sound and Visual System for running courses.
Conversely, a grant funder may provide a restricted grant for revenue costs relating to youth work. We wouldn’t be able to purchase a sound system with this grant, but we would be able to use a grant of this nature to fund a youth worker, and associated core costs (such as a proportion of the core utility bills of the charity, as without these costs covered, we wouldn’t be able to run youth activities)
Our accounts are published every year and are independently examined. You can view them here.
