The AfriChild Centre has qualified for the second phase of Humentum’s Administration Costs Research (ACR) Project whose purpose is to enable international grant-making foundations and other funders to understand more clearly whether, or not, they are sufficiently covering grantees’ financial needs.
The findings will be used by the community of international grant-making foundations to help inform their future policies in relation to cost coverage accordingly.
AfriChild was one of the 90 organizations selected to take part in the first phase of the research which sampled grantees from foundations based in Western and Eastern Europe, East and West Africa, Latin America and South Asia.
50 organizations including AfriChild qualified to take part in the second phase of the research, where issues of administrative costs will be explored in more depth. During this process some organizations will be invited to be one of the case studies included in the research.
“It was a dream for us to get to the second level and a big learning for us,” Vivian Letasi, Finance and Administrative Officer at AfriChild noted. “This research will help us to review and improve our costing and budgeting processes” she added
Administration is essential to the effective, efficient and safe delivery of projects and programmes, but without adequate funding, such functions may be inhibited. Alternatively, the organization either has to draw on reserves to fund such functions, or fund them disproportionately from unrestricted income.
In Uganda, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rely heavily on restricted funding to support their project work and there is a risk it could undermine their organizational effectiveness or financial resilience. Restricted funding for project or Programme grants does not typically cover a full share of the administration costs incurred for the organization as a whole.
