Manvinder Rattan introduces the Voices Foundation, and how you can support its work to help children find their voices and become adult choir members...
We know one of the biggest worries music groups have is the long-term financial health of their group. Even groups who make a surplus each year can have that nagging thought: ‘what happens if something goes wrong next year?’ More money would mean less worry and more stability, and perhaps more importantly it would mean more opportunities to try new things and ways of enjoying making music.
Planning
Improving the financial health of your groups shouldn’t just be about getting some cash in as quickly as you can. It’s about looking at your finances as a whole; where does your income come from? Are you maximising those sources of income? Where do you spend most of your money? Could you cut costs? Are you missing some ‘easy wins’? Could you do things differently to generate more income or save money? Are there any areas you’re not making money from but could be? There are two key words when it comes to income: sustainable and diverse.
Sustainable: regular income that will be there every year. A funding bid for a project can be great – but the money is normally a one-off injection to do something specific. Claiming Gift Aid on your membership subscriptions is money that you can get every year and spend how you want. Building good corporate sponsorships is more valuable, permanent and reliable than a bucket shake every Christmas
Diverse: the more varied sources of sustainable income you have, the better you can deal with one decreasing or disappearing all together. For example: membership fees very often make up a significant proportion of a group’s income. But if you’re too reliant on them and numbers fall, the financial impact can be felt very quickly. Having diverse sources of income means you can absorb a loss of membership income for longer - giving you time to increase numbers again or find alternative income.
Think about how much you need and for what
Below are some examples of areas to look at in order to increase income. They involve varying amounts of work and offering different potential returns. If an extra £300 per year would make a big difference to you breaking-even, then maybe an annual fundraising event will do the job. If you are looking for an extra £1,000 to invest in expanding, then you might need to try a few things or make more fundamental changes to your existing income streams. Before you launch into any of these, think about why you want money and how much you might need.
- Have you been dipping into reserves and need to stabilise and break even?
- Would you like to make a small surplus to breathe easier?
- Maybe you want to create a decent surplus so you can expand and invest?
- Maybe you are stable but want to try something new and need one-off funding?
Having a clear idea at this stage of what and how much you want will help you decide where to direct your efforts and which activities to spend time on.
Be aware of any tax and legal implications before you plan to raise income
Sometimes there are opportunities to increase your income by taking advantage of tax breaks for charities. But some aspects of fundraising can be tightly regulated or fall within VAT and tax laws. These are covered briefly in each of the relevant resources, or you can call us for advice in advance of making plans.
Resources (available for Making Music members)
Membership fees
Gift Aid
Event income
Corporate sponsorship / partnerships
Friends / supporters scheme
Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR)
- OTR scheme
- OTR overview: what it is, who can benefit and how we can help
- OTR overview: webinar
- Orchestra Tax Relief service
‘Traditional’ funding
Donations
Fundraising events and sponsored challenges
Gift Aid
Easyfundraising
Crowd funding
We hope you find this Making Music resource useful. If you have any comments or suggestions about the guidance please contact us. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the content of this guidance is accurate and up to date, Making Music do not warrant, nor accept any liability or responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of the content, or for any loss which may arise from reliance on the information contained in it.
