Full cost recovery

Following on from ACEVO's three-year Full Cost Recovery training programme, which reached 15,000 voluntary organisations, a more specialised range of products and services has been developed. The various training opportunities, website resources, one-to-one support, tools and publications are specific to your needs. Whether you are a beginner and need help in fully costing your projects, or someone who is familiar with the full cost principles, these services will be valuable for you.

Why Full Cost Recovery?

Understanding your organisation's full costs is critical in strategic decision making, and ensuring you remain sustainable. ACEVO has a range of tools and services which help you to implement the principles of Full Cost Recovery to your organisation. This is a method of cost allocation which ensures appropriate portions of overheads are allocated in projects and services.

Struggling to secure funding for overhead costs leads to underinvestment in:

management and leadership
internal and external infrastructure
strategic development and governance.

This difficulty is historically exacerbated by a trend on the part of the third sector's funders towards funding the direct costs of projects rather than overheads or "core funding". Failure to secure funding for overhead costs makes important services, including public services, and the organisations that deliver them, unsustainable.

Both government and the sector's representatives have agreed on a solution: Full Cost Recovery (FCR).

Under FCR, organisations and their funders ensure that the price of projects and services reflects the full costs of delivery, including the legitimate portion of overhead costs. This commitment poses challenges for both organisations and their funders.

Third sector organisations must cost their projects and services on an accurate, defensible and sustainable basis.
Government must ensure that all public bodies fund services sustainably, by permitting the inclusion in prices of the relevant portion of overheads, and ensure that prices are determined on a realistic basis.

ACEVO has been campaigning for this full costing allocation model to be sector wide since 1999. For more information on these services, please contact Orli Gorenski via email or call 020 7280 4976 to discuss your needs. The Full Cost Recovery website provides information on each area of ACEVO's Full Cost Solutions package.

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