Budgeting

Whether your short course is financed through donor funding or course fees (or a mix of the two), it needs to be financially viable and sustainable in order to receive UWC endorsement. To help in creating a sustainable budget, there are various areas you may want to think about:

  • Control costs from the start - e. g. think creatively about venues that will meet your needs that have a moderate price or recruit local facilitators and guest speakers

  • Plan your budget - get a picture early on about what your expenditure will be in detail so that you can ensure you achieve the required income (from donor funding, course fees or both)

  • Factor in a contingency - have extra funds available for emergency situations

*Please note that 20% of between 10% to 100% of course cost should go to need-based scholarships.


Financial Models

UWC short courses broadly follow different financial models:

  • Externally funded: the course is provided at no or nominal cost to the participant, using external financial support

  • Cost recovery: participant pays a fee according to cost of providing the course

  • Cross-subsidisation (no surplus): participant fee provides for financial aid for other course participants

  • Surplus (with cross-subsidisation): participant fees are set in order to support other UWC activity (e.g. scholarships for a 2-year UWC education)

Short courses of all models will find the template and example below useful for planning their budgets. To use any of the three resources below, please copy it to your Drive.

Low Level Budget

Filling out a low level budget will help you to better understand the true costs of your short course, how much external funding you may need and/or what your course fee should be.

A template is provided below, thanks to the team of Together for Development, 2017, giving you ideas of what needs to be covered. Please make a copy of this, save to your Drive, and edit as you see necessary.

Short course budget

And here is a full example budget provided by Catalyst, 2019, which you can view and use to help you to formulate your own budget.

Catalyst 2019 Budget (UWC Conference)