Meeting costs
“If money was no object, running a Meeting Centre would be absolutely fantastic, because you’d be able to do everything that you want to do in accordance with the model.” – Health care professional
“The key challenges at the minute is trying to get enough members in to make it totally independent and viable without having to get funding from anywhere else.” – Meeting Centre staff member
“If you charge enough to become self-sustaining, you then rule out a lot of people that, perhaps, won’t meet the criteria for, you know, council funding and be self-funding, but if it’s too much money, then people won’t attend, and the whole thing just collapses then, doesn’t it?” – Health care professional
“If we want to get more sustainable, we’re going to have to get more volunteers in to keep the costs down.” – Meeting Centre trustee
Various decisions need to be made which will impact upon costs and whether those costs can be met. These include the range of provision on offer; the pricing structure to members; and whether to focus on one Meeting Centre in one place, or multiple Meeting Centres across a region.
A Meeting Centre may not be able to offer the range of provision it would like due to limited funds and the desire to keep costs down. Reduced provision could help keep a Meeting Centre sustainable; it could also limit your ability to meet needs and appeal to people.
A Meeting Centre will need to carefully balance how much it charges members and how many members it needs to be viable. If charges are too low to start with, this can be difficult to change later.
Running multiple Meeting Centres across a region can help keep costs low through the sharing of infrastructure and resources, and help meet costs through region-wide fundraising.
Recommendations:
- Carefully consider and balance what is most important and possible to offer with the limited funding available. If you offer modest or reduced provision consider the potential impact on recruitment. If you offer fuller provision consider the impact on available funds going forward.
- When setting pricing, consult with members on what they can afford and are willing to pay. At the same time, be realistic regarding what costs membership charges must cover.
- If running multiple Meeting Centres consider economies of scale such as shared resources and centralised administration.
External funding
“Because we try and keep our membership fee pretty reasonable, then the challenge is to make sure we keep enough money to keep the Meeting Centre actually running with staff and rent and all that sort of stuff. So again, looking for funding is one of the big challenges. That’s what everybody is looking for, aren’t they?” – Meeting Centre staff member
“I think most Meeting Centres, one of the jobs that you essentially have to have, is someone who is prepared to do grant applications and funding applications. Not just the people who are prepared to provide the support, but someone who is familiar with, or prepared to get embroiled in, the applications.” – Meeting Centre trustee
“There are so few funders out there that want to fund something that’s already working.” – Lead of Meeting Centre-running organisation
“If you’re spending half your life trying to fundraise to keep the show on the road, then that’s going to be really, really difficult.” – Meeting Centre trustee
“You know, so many people are grateful for it being here, I think it’s well worth somebody putting some cash into it, really.” – Meeting Centre member
Many Meeting Centres run on a combination of different income and funding streams. Finding available external funding is a key part of supporting a Meeting Centre to keep going.
It is unlikely Meeting Centres will be able to offer a range of high quality provision purely on income from members fees, unless those fees are high. Therefore some external income is likely to be necessary in order for Meeting Centres to be inclusive and accessible to many.
Stable, ongoing community support for dementia, such as Meeting Centres, requires stable, ongoing funding. This is difficult to find in a funding landscape that prioritises new projects and only offers short term competitive grants. Accessing funding in such a landscape is difficult and time consuming and requires expertise.
Health services and local authorities may recognise the importance of tackling social isolation, but they have a primary responsibility to meet the most acute medical and social care needs. Hence they are unlikely to have as much resource available for anything else. This means funding for a social model of support such as Meeting Centres may be difficult to get. This is also true for funding to support people who attend Meeting Centres, but whose needs are not yet acute. Providing hard evidence that it will directly prevent the development of acute medical and care needs can help.
Finally, it is better not to have “all your eggs in one basket” with regard to managing a Meeting Centre’s finances. This applies whether you are seeking funding or sourcing income, or allotting it to meet the various costs of running a Meeting Centre.
Recommendations:
- Seek income and funding from multiple sources, and organise it into different pots for different purposes. This way you don’t have “all your eggs in one basket”, and how money is managed to meet costs will be clear and efficient, with core activities protected.
- Meeting Centres should gather evidence and lobby for more formal recognition of the needs and benefits of social inclusion. Of particular importance is preventing and delaying people from reaching crisis point in their health and care needs.
- Have an experienced person with responsibility and time for making funding applications on an ongoing basis.
Suggestions for potential commissioners or funders of Meeting Centres:
- Consider longer-term funding to support third sector initiatives that can demonstrate they are filling a gap or fulfilling a need in the care pathway. This way, skilled and experienced practice is not lost.
- Try to ensure applications for funding are not too demanding, difficult and time consuming. This is important for making funding more accessible to grass-roots organisations with limited resources.
Get Real with Meeting Centres and the SCI-Dem project 