We believe in transparency about how we work and what we do which is evidenced in our updates from CEO, our Community Catch ups, reflective practice blogs like our one on Kick the Dust.
We also believe that more companies, and arts companies who receive public money, could and should be more transparent and open about their financial processes and philosophy.
Money and resources
In a world of increasingly grey areas, we are hesitant to put in hard and fast rules about how we will or won’t do things.
Inspired by Futerra’s (a sustainability agency based in London) constitution we believe that:
It’s not who the company is, it’s what we can do together.
This means that funders, partners and sponsored are discussed regularly when they approach us or we them to understand what we think can be done together before we make the decision to work with them. Sometimes we’ll get this wrong, but we’re trying to set out our process so we can understand when it works and when it falls short. We discuss this stuff weekly at team meetings, quarterly at team days and with our board too.
Having said all that, there are still a few no go areas for us.
We will not work with companies who are classified as selling drugs, tobacco, alcohol or arms. As a social enterprise serving young people we will engage with political parties across the spectrum but we will not take money or be sponsored by any party.
Working with us
We believe in amplifying the voices of young people & helping them talk truth to power.
As such, all views are their own and we will not become another barrier to them expressing themselves. Working with us means that the young people on our projects and programmes may say or do stuff that you don’t agree with, and sometimes we won’t either. We communicate this when we work with funders & partners. As such they know they are choosing to work with us because:
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They see the value in our main purpose: amplifying the voices of young people.
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There is space to align our missions and goals in a creative way.
How the dollar comes & goes
Outgoing (Data Visualisation)
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53% is spent directly on projects
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Approx 36% of total budget on salary, pensions, NICs
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11% overheads and miscellaneous including office rent, travel, training, marketing.
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9.5% of our total salary spend is on chief exec
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Pay gap is in favour of women based on median hourly pay (more part time male staff and more senior women) by £2 per hour
Income:
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Largely from 5 key funders Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Esmee Fairbairn, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Children In Need
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Supported through other smaller project grants such as Heart of England Community Foundation,
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Sponsors for specific project Brum Youth Trends from Weselyan, Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Aston University, Birmingham Met College, Birmingham City University, HSBC, School of Code
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Commissions and sales come mostly from arts, culture & heritage organisations and mostly for workshops, events and talks
Feedback
Do you think we’re getting this wrong or is this something we can learn from?
Written by Free Radical, a part of Beatfreeks Collective.