Funding your Out of School Club

Having decided to start an Out of School Club, your biggest challenge will be to find funding. The type of funding you go for will depend on:

• Your reasons for starting the business
• What the money is for
• How much money do you require
• How soon you need it
• Nature of your business
• Plans for future growth

Funding options

When they first set up, out of school clubs typically rely on either grants, charitable funds, or the proprietor's own money for funding.

Grants: from government and statutory bodies. The government has made significant amounts of money available through the National Childcare Strategy, launched in 1998, to support childcare groups through start-up grants and sustainability funding. This is designed to increase the number of childcare places available. Check with your local Early Years and Childcare service for availability, as there is currently government funding available to specifically support their extended schools initiative.

For a high level view of the types (and amounts) of funding available from the government to local authorities to support extended schools, see Funding Extended Schools: DCSF guidance for local authorities and schools. 

Own money: includes savings, equity or borrowing. External equity is money raised from selling shares in your business, in return for a proportion of the profits and a share of the future value. If borrowing to finance the business the debt is usually secured against assets of the business or is guaranteed by you or others. If the business is funded by borrowing, it needs to make enough money to cover both capital and interest repayments.

Charitable funds: can come from charitable trusts or from donations. In recent years the lottery has been a big source of charitable funding for voluntary childcare organisations. Many organisations are successful in attracting this type of funding, but it can be time consuming and a drain on valuable time and resources to continually apply for funds in order to maintain the business

Further information

For more information about funding options, SureStart has a comprehensive web-based business guide for child carers called It's the Business.

There is a new website called Funding Central which provides access to thousands of funding opportunities for organisations in England. It has an interactive online tool which helps you to identify which grants or loans your organisation may be eligible for. Most of the grants and loans that it covers are for charitable or voluntary organisations or social enterprises. If you run your out of school club as a private business you may not be eligible for many of the funding sources covered by the website.
www.fundingcentral.org.uk

If your out of school club is a private business, your local BusinessLink office should be able to provide you with some general information about business funding. Business Link has a Grants and Support Directory which is a good source of funding information for businesses.