How the money is spent
Our expenditure for 2010/11 was £5,907,173.
Just over half of this comes from unrestricted funds – that means money which we can spend where we think it will have the greatest impact. Much of this ‘unrestricted funding’ comes from the block grant from the Department for International Development (DFID), to whom we report back on a range of agreed objectives. A 2010 independent Evaluation of the Progressio-DFID Programme Partnership Agreement (273k PDF) stated: "It is hard to see where and how Progressio could operate more efficiently... Development worker costs are excellent value for money in comparison with other possible ways of achieving what they offer."
The rest of our expenditure comes from restricted funds – which means funding we have received to spend on specific projects. We report back to these donors on the agreed objectives for these specific projects.
Breakdown of expenditure
In 2010/11, the breakdown of our expenditure was:
Country programmes: 81%
This is the money we spend on placing development workers with partner organisations in the countries where we work. It includes the cost of recruiting and funding development workers. Our partner organisations provide contributions in kind – such as office facilities used by the development worker, and transport to enable the development worker to do his or her work. But otherwise our development workers are fully funded by Progressio, including their living allowance, accommodation, and travel to and from their placement.
To run our country programmes, we also have to meet operational costs such as rent and bills for country offices; the salaries of staff who work on and oversee our country programmes (both in-country and at our head office in the UK); travel costs associated with managing our country programmes; and monitoring and evaluation.
Expenditure on country programmes also includes our advocacy work calling for policy changes to improve the lives of the people and communities we work with. These costs include the salaries of our UK-based policy and advocacy team.
Our expenditure on country programmes in 2010/11 was distributed as follows:
- Africa (Malawi, Somaliland, Zimbabwe): 34%
- Middle East (Yemen): 7%
- Asia (Timor-Leste): 4%
- Central America (El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua): 24%
- Caribbean (Dominican Republic, Haiti): 21%
- South America (Peru, plus expenditure on our final development worker placements in Ecuador): 10%
Governance: 11%
This is the money that we spend on running a UK-based charity. It includes the cost of essential support operations such as finance and administration and the operational costs of our UK office (rent, rates, heating, equipment, etc).
Communications: 5%
This includes salaries and related costs (eg freelance fees), and the cost of producing our publications and running our website. The proportion of expenditure on communications is small compared to many other UK charities.
Fundraising and publicity: 3%
This includes salaries of fundraising staff and associated costs (such as the cost of producing fundraising materials). Again, the proportion of our expenditure on fundraising is much smaller than many other UK charities.
Read Progressio’s financial statements for the year 2010/11 (included in the Trustees' Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 March 2011, 2.5MB PDF)
