Budget Guidance

All proposals for Film Hub Scotland’s funding programmes, including the Film Exhibition Fund, are required to feature a completed budget document using the Budget Template.

While we recognise that each organisation might structure and format their proposals differently, a clear, detailed, and realistic budget remains a necessary part of each successful application. Please use the guidance below to complete your budget, and if you have any further questions, make sure to sign up to a Funding Surgery with the Film Hub Scotland team.

Please note that we are not able to fund 100% of activity costs. While we do not have a set percentage requirement for match funding, we expect to see box office income and other partnership support – whether in cash, volunteer time, or other in-kind contributions – included in the budget.

There are two sections in your budget – income and expenditure. Your budget will need to balance, so that the total income and expenditure are the same.

Income

This section includes all income that will help you deliver your activity. Please include all income you anticipate or have confirmed, including grants from other sources, corporate sponsorship, box office, in-kind provision, and so on. This helps us understand the overall scale of your activity.

Income falls into two categories:

Cash Funding:

  • Any support that you are applying to receive from Film Hub Scotland
  • Additional grants from other organisations: any cash applied for or confirmed from other organisations, e.g. local authorities, trusts and foundations, etc. If the funding is not confirmed, please use the ‘notes’ section to clarify how certain you are that your organisation will successfully receive this support
  • Box Office: any anticipated income from ticket sales at your events. Please be realistic here and include the breakdown of your box office income into the ‘notes’ section, as in the example below
  • Sponsorship: any cash funding provided as part of a corporate partnership, a commercial sponsorship, or any other sponsorship deal. If the sponsorship is not confirmed, please use the ‘notes’ section to clarify how certain you are that your organisation will successfully receive this support
  • Any cash contributed by your organisation, such as balance carried over from the last financial year
  • Any other source of cash income

In the image above, an imaginary organisation is expected to receive support from a variety of sources, indicating a healthy and diverse income portfolio and projecting a total cash income of £15,400, out of which £7,500 (49%) represents FHS funding. The box office income is calculated based on an estimated turnout of 1,500 attendees, which is commensurate to the applied-for level of support from Film Hub Scotland (£7,500) at a cost of £5/attendee, which is the expected threshold for an established event or an event taking place in a large urban area.

Alongside funding by Film Hub Scotland, the organisation has applied for two other grants and expects to receive some corporate sponsorship. Although none of this funding is confirmed, the organisation is confident that its major grant application (A) will be successful (a good proposal would further elaborate the reasons behind this certainty). In the scenario where Grant B and corporate sponsorship are not received, the organisation would only lose out on £900, which is not critical to its core activity.

One aspect of this application that the organisation should clarify in the text of their proposal is their cash flow, i.e. the timed order of all instances where major amounts of money come in and out of their accounts. Why is this necessary? Most funders, including Film Hub Scotland, release their funding in several instalments, whereby some percentage of the total award is given before the funded activity takes place, and the rest is transferred upon its conclusion. In this scenario, if the applying organisation is successful, they will receive their award in two instalments, of £4,500 and £3,000. If the nature of an organisation’s activity requires a lot of upfront payments, this might present a significant issue. This is why, when looking at your expense budget (see further), we will scrutinise not only what you will spend your income on, but also when you will have to spend it.

In-kind support from partners:

  • Any venue access that was provided to your organisation for free (please clarify the calculation of this budget entry in the ‘notes’ section)
  • All unpaid work contributed by your staff (please clarify the calculation of this budget entry in the ‘notes’ section)
  • The estimated value of the labour of your volunteers (please clarify the calculation of this budget entry in the ‘notes’ section)
  • Any other source of in-kind support provided by your partners and staff

The image above shows that the organisation was allowed to use a venue for 5 days for free. They estimate the value of this provision to be £1,200/day based on the quote that the venue typically provides to paying customers. The organisation also estimates that the value of their volunteers’ work at £1,000, meaning that, if a paid staff member were to undertake this labour, they would have been remunerated that amount.

Why is it important to include in-kind (or ‘pro-bono’) support, even though it doesn’t show up in your organisation’s bank account? Listing in-kind support in your budget and accurately estimating the value of all pro-bono work is crucial for your organisation’s growth. Every organisation aims to strengthen its financial stability and reduce the amount of unpaid work done by staff. By including all in-kind support, you can demonstrate to any future funders that, instead of simply increasing expenses, you’re using more income to fairly compensate the labour that may have previously gone unpaid.

Expenditure

This is where you list all of the expenditures that will enable you to deliver your activity. You will notice that there are two columns: ‘Total (£)’ and ‘FHS Cash’. The ‘Total’ column should include expenses to be covered by both the FHS support and all other income and in-kind support listed in the previous sections.

Please fill in the ‘FHS cash’ column, showing how you intend to spend your cash income from FHS. This is the most important part of the budget, as it tells us where you plan to spend our financial support. The total sum of all cells in the ‘FHS Cash’ should add up to the value that you are applying to receive in your proposal.

Eligible expenses:

Each organisation and project will have its individual needs – however, broadly speaking, we can support the following costs. This list is not exhaustive, and other items may be considered.

  • Film rights and print transport
  • Activity-specific staffing costs – curation, marketing, project management expenses, etc.
  • Venue hire and activity-specific equipment hire
  • Marketing, advertising, and PR
  • Event costs for enhanced screenings – speaker, talent, or artists fees
  • Volunteer and evaluation expenses
  • Accessibility costs – creating accessible supporting materials, subtitling fees, the cost of commissioning BSL interpreters, etc.
  • Outreach and community inclusion costs – providing transport for isolated audiences, etc.
  • Audience development expenses – young programmers’ workshops, roundtable discussions, etc.
  • Rights clearances and curation fees for archival materials
  • Costs related to online activity, such as web platforms or hosting fees

Ineligible expenses:

All proposed spend should contribute to the activity proposed. Beyond this, there are some areas not suitable for our support. These include:

  • Filmmaking costs (including workshops), support for filmmakers to develop or distribute their own work, or for programmes that exclusively engage filmmaker audiences
  • Capital costs covering building repairs, equipment purchase, and any additional health and safety measures
  • Programmes entirely comprised of free events, unticketed events, or screenings where audience numbers cannot be reported
  • General running costs of organisations not specifically related to the activity
  • Activity that should be covered by statutory education, including events taking place on school grounds/in school hours
  • Events not primarily focused on film exhibition
  • Activity covered by existing funding arrangements
  • Programmes that duplicate provision in the same area.
  • Activity taking place in a venue not open to the public (e.g. in members-only venues)
  • The set-up of new film clubs and opening of new cinema venues

In the example above, the organisation carefully clarifies the breakdown of each of its expenses in the ‘notes’ section. You may recall earlier that we brought up the notion of a cash flow forecast as something that FHS carefully monitors for every application. Here, we might be particularly interested in whether the organisation has enough flexibility when it comes to expenses such as ‘film licencing costs’, ‘special event costs’, ‘speaker/staff remuneration’, ‘accessibility costs’, ‘contingency’. Is the organisation able to run its activity as planned if it receives only 60% of its total income prior to its event dates? Answering this question in a convincing way is mandatory for any comprehensive proposal.

Any questions? Get in touch: info@filmhubscotland.com. 

 

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