Page 6 - NAS Members Guide to Funding

Planning with ease “Awards for All” funding programme (see Part 3). tle for a page here
PLANNING YOUR funding from multiple funding sources. The association’s
ASSOCIATION’S IDEA successes include £10,000 fromThe National Lottery’s
There are lots of ways to fund your association’s idea
but you do need to start with a clear plan of what Timescale
you want to do and what you want to achieve (your Whether your idea is big or small, the time it will take
outcomes). from start to finish is likely to take longer than you
ould be overview text relating to the n
Some people love making plans while others loathe every moment. If you don’t regularly do planning, writing or reports, it can be off-putting to have to think about paperwork and planning ahead. You do not need reams of lists and spreadsheets to move your association’s idea forward into a sound plan. Getting together, chatting, taking some notes and summarising the general plan on a couple of sides of paper will do to start things off. A cuppa and cake helps the planning process enormously! Include the following:
• What you want to do and why • How you will do it
• How long it will take
• How much it will cost
• Who else needs to be involved
• What the end result will be (your outcomes) • How you will know when you have finished.
CASE STUDY: “Your Association’s Plan: Revidge Allotment Association in Blackburn”
“Back in 2017, we decided to make an ambitious
3-year plan of Development & Maintenance. We went for a range of options not just infrastructure. These included replacing an old ‘builder’s por taloo’ with a new compost loo, developing an association website, creating two new parking spaces, and sorting out the water supply. For new plot holders we also planned four new starter plots, a mentoring scheme, and a handbook.”
By carefully moving from a basic idea to a good plan, the association has gone from strength to strength: Revidge Allotments Association has now obtained free labour from Community Payback (see Part 2) and grant
currently think. A useful rule of thumb is to estimate how long you think your idea will take and then double it.
Estimated timescales can change for any reason, but
for allotments it is essential to include the seasons/ weather, as it might actually be the next growing season before your association’s idea bears fruit. Awaiting types of permission from e.g. a landlord, council, or other regulatory body, may take much longer than you hope. Supply chain issues may affect the timescale of infrastructure works. Prices may inflate over a long time period. If you receive a grant there may be a delay in withdrawing funds while your association’s bank complies with money laundering rules and checks. In other words: timescales can snowball out of control due to no fault of your own. One of the main reasons that great ideas fall apart is not poor planning, but naive underestimation of timescales. Talking with associations who have achieved success with their idea before you start can help with working out timescales.
Your association’s budget
Whichever way your association chooses to fund your idea, you will need to have a budget. Put simply, the budget is the amount of money your association will need to complete your plan from star t to finish. All the budget actually does is state the amount of money needed and what it will pay for.
Sounds terrifying? If you have never done a budget before, make an itemised list of everything your association will need to make your idea real. Now find out how much it will cost for each item on the list. Added up, the grand total is your budget.
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