Grant reporting
Grant reporting, learning visits and sharing feedback for funded organisations
How to budget for Impact and Learning activities in your grant application
City Bridge Foundation encourages grant applicants to include all of the costs of delivering their work, including the indirect or support costs. We want to fund projects for success, and we understand that your core costs need to be covered to enable this.
Budgeting for Impact and Learning activities
When it comes to grant application budgets, many organisations focus primarily on how much money they need to directly deliver their planned activities.
At City Bridge Foundation, we encourage you to take a full cost recovery approach, which means that you include ALL of the costs of delivering the work, including the indirect or support costs.
For example, your budget could include the proportionate costs of core staff, overheads of the building you deliver from, website hosting, legal costs etc.
We want to fund projects for success, and we understand that your core costs need to also be covered to enable this.
As part of your full cost recovery budget, we encourage you to devote time to understanding the impact of your work, how to feed this learning into your work and how much budget this will require. On this page, we’ll explore which Impact and Learning activities to include and why it is important to do so.
Why Include Impact and Learning in your Grant Budget?
- Improved Project Management: You’ll be able to track progress, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions based on real-time data.
- Enhanced Transparency: By incorporating impact and learning into your budget, you demonstrate a commitment to accountability and responsible financial management.
- Enhanced Sustainability: Learning from your project’s outcomes enables you to refine strategies and increase the long-term sustainability of your initiatives. This can lead to more successful projects in the future.
What Impact and Learning activities can you include?
- Evaluation and Learning (Staff Time): This may include staff time for designing, conducting, and overseeing project evaluations. It also covers the cost of attending at relevant learning events, including those delivered by City Bridge Foundation.
- Reporting (Staff Time): This may cover staff time dedicated to completing City Bridge Foundation’s end-of-year reports, which may be done online or via phone.
- External Evaluation Costs: This may encompass the cost of commissioning external evaluations of the City Bridge Foundation funded project.
- Travel for Learning Events: This may include travel costs for staff attending learning events directly related to the City Bridge Foundation funded work
What should not be included?
- Unrelated Impact and Learning Activities: Activities or expenses related to impact and learning that are not directly connected to the work City Bridge Foundation is funding, unless they are part of a proportionate % of the core costs of your organisation for full cost recovery purposes.
- Client/Beneficiary Incentives: City Bridge Foundation cannot fund disproportionate incentives but can however fund the proportionate and relevant costs of enabling participation (for example if you are asking for a significant amount of time from service users when they would not normally be engaged in services, you can pay for participation/consultation, or purchase gift vouchers/items etc). You should always include the costs of inclusive participation and accessibility, for impact and learning work and the wider project, and these are also eligible costs.
How should it be included?
Please add an estimate of the costs for the relevant activities to your project budget as you would any other item. Our assessors will review your budget when they are assessing your application and will work with you if necessary to refine it, looking at things like whether you’ve included all relevant costs and factored in inflation etc – you don’t have to submit a ‘perfect’ budget first time.
Where can you get more information?
For any questions about this, which aren’t covered in our application guidance, you can contact us via our website.
Creating SMART outcomes for successful grant applications
The success of a grant application can often hinge on your ability to create a compelling proposal that not only outlines your project’s goals but also presents a clear path to achieving them. One essential tool in achieving this is by setting SMART outcomes.