The Children’s Centre actually comprises six separate companies, a structure devised several years ago to: best deliver our services, protect our assets and provide a stable platform to build for the future. We refer to all these companies collectively as The Children’s Centre and similarly the figures below encompass the whole entity.
How we are funded
Our aim is to make our services self-supporting by drawing income from a wide range of sources:
- Contractual partnerships with statutory bodies enable us to gain access to some of the Island’s most vulnerable children, young people and families.
- Parents and carers pay daily fees for their children to attend our nursery, crèche facilities and after-school and holiday clubs.
- Organisations booking CPD sessions are charged daily delegate fees.
Inevitably some projects cannot be completely funded by other parties, and because we passionately believe in the value of these projects, we will undertake to finance the shortfall through fundraising. These projects enable us to meet needs not currently recognised by statutory bodies and maintain our independence. Voluntary income whether from fundraising events, donations, grants or legacies is an important part of our income and accounted for 9% of our total income last year.
How do we put this money to work?
So, what do we spend this money on? Our largest investment is in our team – the people who deliver all our services. It is not only their salary costs, but also the other important benefits and training that we pride ourselves in offering to ensure that we attract and retain the very best people who can deliver the very highest quality services. These costs account for over two thirds of our total expenditure. We try to keep administration costs to an absolute minimum, and (excluding staff costs) these costs were only 5% of our total expenditure. Looking at just our fundraising income, for every £1 that we spend, we raise £4.33 in income.
Financial Assistance
We are proud also to promote our Financial Assistance Fund whereby allocated investment income is available for distribution to children, young people and families who are in need of either short-term or ongoing help. This may be to buy necessary equipment, assist with childcare costs, to enable a young person to participate in a school trip or for a child to maintain contact with absent family members.
Safeguarding our future
It is important that we retain some income every year to build up reserves and best practice suggests that all charities should keep a minimum of 6 months’ operating costs in reserves. We also have a programme of reinvestment in property to give our clients and staff the very best environment to enjoy. We are spending in the region of £1m at our main site in Douglas to build an extension and re-develop the gardens, existing buildings and frontage. Most of the money has come from fundraising through the Building Blocks Appeal or from legacies, but some from our financial reserves. We now need to replace the money spent and our target for the next 2 years is to raise at least £250k for this purpose alone; our aim is to sustain the balance between maintaining security for our staff and clients, as well as investing in exciting new projects.
To request a copy of our statutory accounts, please contact Debi Michelson, Chief Financial Officer.
