Why Full Cost Recovery Matters

Urban Farm DB summary

Published 5 April 2026 and updated 14 June 2026. Full cost recovery means funders covering not only a project's direct costs but its proportional share of overheads — rent, finance, IT, HR and chief-executive time. The article works through an example where two of ten staff (20 per cent of capacity) deliver a project, so £28,000 of £140,000 in annual overheads is added to £85,000 of direct costs for a £113,000 budget, and notes that overhead rates of 15–25 per cent are common sector guidance. It argues that accepting grants below true cost is a structural funding problem rather than a budgeting error, with consequences including staff burnout and governance risk, and notes that charity staff earn roughly 7 per cent less per hour than equivalent roles elsewhere in the economy.

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.

• 15–25 %

  overhead rate(charity overheads)

  Economics

  region

  United Kingdom

  year

  2026

  method

  overhead rates described on the page as common sector guidance

• -7 %↓ Decrease

  hourly pay gap(charity pay)

  EconomicsControl: equivalent roles elsewhere in the economy

  region

  United Kingdom

  year

  2026

  method

  hourly pay of charity staff compared with equivalent roles

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Economic viabilityContradictsWith caveats