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What the money can be spent on

What we can fund

We can fund:

  • staff salaries for the service(s) applied for
  • volunteer costs for the service(s) applied for
  • service delivery – including any direct costs associated with delivering, expanding or adapting services such as materials, new equipment or room hire
  • very small-scale refurbishment needed to deliver the expanded or adapted service(s) applied for. For example, installing a partition in a community centre so people can access financial advice privately, or upgrading a kitchen to provide meals in a warm hub. These must be fully complete and paid for by 31 March 2024.
  • improvements to systems and infrastructure needed to deliver the expanded or adapted services
  • training and development for staff and volunteers delivering the services applied for
  • organisational development and capacity building (as long as this is not the main focus)
  • a share of the organisation’s overheads needed to run the services applied for. For example any fixed costs to support the running of the organisation, such as overall management, administration and support staff costs, rent and utilities.

Overhead costs - how to work them out

Organisation overheads are costs shared among the organisation’s different projects and activities. We will fund the share of organisations' overheads for the critical services we fund. We call this full cost recovery. We ask organisations we fund to allocate the share on a fair and proportionate basis. Read about how to work out overheads in our guide to full cost recovery.

We are funding expanding or adapting services, but only from the date we offer funding.

For example, if we offered funding to adapt or expand a service on 1 October 2023, this part of the funding would only cover 1 October 2023 to 31 March 2024.

We can also fund retrospective costs of existing services applied for, from 24 July 2023.

We can fund future activity up to the end of March 2024. But we can also retrospectively fund costs incurred between 24 July 2023 and the date we offer funding.

These costs can only be for running the existing service(s) applied for, and not for anything else.

We know it’s unusual for funding to be available for retrospective costs. But we want to support organisations as much as we can with this funding. Any payment made for retrospective costs should be shown as unrestricted funding in the organisation's accounts.

The retrospective costs we can fund are:

  • existing staff costs for running the service(s) applied for
  • existing volunteer costs for running the service(s) applied for
  • a share of the organisation’s overheads for the service(s) applied for, including overall management, administration and support staff costs, rent and utilities

We’ll need evidence of any retrospective costs

If we offer funding for retrospective costs, we’ll need evidence that the costs were incurred on or after 24 July 2023.

This could include:

  • copies of bank statements
  • payroll information
  • invoices or bills

We asked organisations to fill in a budget table

Using our budget table template (Word document, 28 KB). The template includes guidance on how to complete the table.

What we could not fund

We could not fund:

  • critical services that are not experiencing increased demand and increased costs
  • brand new services. We will only fund existing, adapted or expanded services
  • services being delivered outside of England
  • applications that only ask for retrospective costs, without any cost for future delivery of services
  • expanding or adapting existing services between 24 July 2023 and when we offered funding (but we can fund existing services in this time)
  • larger building works or maintenance, or any refurbishment work that is not completed and paid for by 31 March 2024
  • purchase of buildings or land
  • campaigning, political or lobbying activities (we’ll only fund the delivery of direct services)
  • religious activities (we can fund religious organisations if their project benefits the wider community and does not include religious content)
  • gifts or activities that make profits for private gain
  • activities that petition for additional funding
  • goods or services that the organisation applying has a statutory duty to provide
  • giving cash direct to people experiencing hardship
  • loan repayments