How the money is spent

Our expenditure for 2009/10 was £5,653,536. (These are provisional figures awaiting confirmation from our auditor.)

Our budget for 2010/11 is £5.5 million.

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. Read our most recent report to DFID.

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 2009/10, the breakdown of our expenditure was:

Country programmes: 78%

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 2009/10 was distributed as follows:

• Central America and Carribbean: 41%
• South America: 17%
• Africa and Middle East: 37%
• Asia: 5%

We hope in the years up to 2015 to increase the amount of work that we do in Africa and the Middle East.

Governance: 13%

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: 4%

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.

Progressio’s draft financial statements for the year 2009/10 are being prepared and will be available to download shortly.

Download Progressio’s financial statements for the year 2008/9: