Charities spend 15.8 million hours reporting to funders - that's too much

Urban Farm DB summary

Published 12 June 2019, this piece estimates that UK charities spend around 15.8 million hours a year on grant monitoring reports, roughly £204 million in staff time. It assumes an average of 40 hours per grant, about 391,280 grants distributed per year and an average grant of around £50,000. Charities with at least one full-time-equivalent member of staff typically juggle five to ten different funders, each asking for similar information in different formats at different times, so the administrative load accumulates without producing learning. The estimate draws on interviews with ten people at small and medium charities reporting to six local authorities and more than fifty funders.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 15,800,000 hours

  sector reporting hours per year(grant reporting burden)

  Economics

  region

  United Kingdom

  year

  2019

  method

  estimate from 40 hours per grant across about 391,280 grants a year

• 204 million_gbp

  sector reporting staff cost(grant reporting burden)

  Economics

  region

  United Kingdom

  year

  2019

  method

  staff time cost of the estimated 15.8 million reporting hours

• 40 hours

  hours per grant(grant reporting burden)

  Economicsn = 10

  region

  United Kingdom

  year

  2019

  method

  average hours to complete monitoring reports for one grant, from interviews with ten people at small and medium charities

Direction of conclusions

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• Economic viabilityContradictsWith caveats