Full cost recovery: A guide and toolkit on cost allocation

Published by NPC & acevo

Across the voluntary sector, organisations struggle to cover their overheads.
The constant scramble for funding damages the services being delivered and the organisations delivering them. Planning for the future becomes sidelined to make ends meet. Front-line work like fundraising, finance, human resources and IT suffers as a result.

Voluntary organisations need to understand the true costs of their activities, and funders need to recognise these full costs too.

Full Cost Recovery: a guide and toolkit on cost allocation provides a template that is designed to help charities calculate their full costs in an easy step-by-step process. The report builds on earlier work in Funding our future II. The template and principles have already been adopted by many organisations, such as the Big Lottery Fund

Training on full cost recovery and the cost allocation template
If you or your organisation would like training on either the theory of full cost recovery or calculating the full costs of your activities, we can help you to find courses. Contact us here.

The guides and training have been developed with support from the Big Lottery Fund, the Active Communities Directorate of the Home Office and the Northern Rock Foundation, and in partnership with acevo and accountants KPMG.

For further information about the guides or training, contact Martin Brookes on 020 7785 6307.

Other useful documents on government funding

Online resources

'I want people to use this toolkit to make sure that they really do know what a particular activity costs them.'
Fiona Mactaggart MP

'The software has proved an invaluable and enlightening resource, easy to use, and with minimal on-costs in terms of staff training.'

Sally Courtney, Toc H (charity)

Click here to read further endorsements from the voluntary sector
Read case studies of organisations that have used the template

The software was developed by Keen Systems