Money, for a group with no money

Sixty people in a hall on a Sunday afternoon. Insurance, the room, posters, ten hi-vis vests and a first aid kit. Total that now, without ringing anybody.

Most of what a first event needs gets described in words, not figures. Cheap vests. A print run. Words do not add up. So here are prices, and you need no committee’s approval to act on them.

British, entry level, checked on 4 August 2026. Every figure moves. The shape of the list does not, and that is the part to copy if you are elsewhere.

One warning before the list. A group’s first spending nearly always comes out of one person’s own account. Until that is written down and paid back it is a debt owed to a volunteer, and those are the quietest reason people leave.

And one about the clock. Ninety minutes with this page and your own quotes gets you a costed year and a named treasurer, and that is a real evening’s work with something to show for it. The rest of what is here runs on other people’s calendars. Quotes come back over days. A hall says yes at its next committee meeting. A grant asks for a governing document and your most recent accounts, which a group formed in March does not have in April, and then decides months later. So budget a few weeks for the first version of your finances to be true, and start the slow items on the evening you do the fast one.

The floor, itemised

What	Entry price	What that buys
Public liability, a year	from £56	Online cover for a not-for-profit with income under £100,000. £2m as standard, £5m costs extra
Or one day only	from £62	Up to 100 visitors. For a group running one thing a year
A hall, for an evening	£20 to £65	£20 is four hours of a parish hall at the local rate. £65 is two hours of a whole suburban hall midweek
A3 posters	from £9.88	Quantity is set at the order stage. This is the price of starting
A5 leaflets	from £16.89	The same job at a smaller size
One PVC banner	from £15.54	Reusable, so a one-off rather than a yearly cost
Ten hi-vis vests	about £30	£2.99 each before VAT
A small first aid kit	£23.50	Rated for up to 25 people at low risk, so two of them for sixty

Add the one-offs. Insurance, a banner, one print run, ten vests and two kits comes to roughly £180 for the year.

Then the room, which decides everything. Twelve monthly meetings at those hall rates is £240 to £780. In a synagogue hall, a community centre back room or somebody’s kitchen, it is nothing.

So the floor is about £180 with a borrowed room, and about £700 to £950 with a hired one. Everything else is rounding.

So the thing to ask people for is a room, not a cheque.

The bank account, the constitution a bank wants and the permit a collecting bucket needs are in what the venue asks for. Read that before any collection.

Making the two big lines smaller

The room. Ask the synagogue, the community centre, a church or mosque you know, the council for voluntary service, any member with a large kitchen. Ask for a standing slot rather than a date. A slot is easier to give away once than to keep giving away.

The insurance. A body you are affiliated to may already cover you, and asking takes one email. The wording is in the venue guide above.

Asking people for money

The rule is four words: fixed amount, named thing.

Weak: “We’re trying to raise some funds to keep the group going, so anything you can give would really help.”

Strong: “The insurance for the vigil on 15 March is £62. Would you cover it, or half of it?”

Underneath both: somebody can picture £62 on a named date and cannot picture supporting a group. One is decided in ten seconds. The other is postponed.

Ask one person at a time, by name, on the phone or face to face. An appeal dropped into a chat of eighty raises almost nothing and spends the ask. Everybody there has now heard it, and said no by saying nothing.

“The hall’s £65 and we’ve got £20 towards it. Would you put in the rest?”

“I’m not asking you to join anything. I’m asking for £20 towards the printing, once.”

“We need six people at £10 a month to cover the room for a year. Would you be one of the six?”

“You paid for the banner out of your own pocket. What do we owe you, and can I get it back to you this week?”

That third one is the whole game. Six people at £10 a month is £720 a year, which covers a hired room and the insurance with change. Standing orders beat collections, and not because of the amount. Nobody has to be asked twice.

One permission, because beginners will not take it. After you name a number, stop talking. The silence is arithmetic, not refusal, and filling it is how you talk somebody down to half.

When somebody paid for it themselves

How you will recognise it. Nobody has mentioned money for weeks, and yet there are leaflets, and a banner, and biscuits.

What to do at the next meeting. Read out what was bought, what it cost and who is owed. Name the date it will be paid, then pay it on that date. A receipt, or a photograph of one, goes to whoever keeps the book.

Then set the limit. Agree what one person may spend without asking, and write the figure in the minutes. Ten or twenty pounds suits most groups.

Where this backfires: set it too low and nothing happens between meetings, because everything waits for permission. Set it at what the group could repay tomorrow.

The treasurer, in four jobs

Ask somebody in advance rather than looking around the room. It is four things.

1. One book. A notebook or a spreadsheet with every payment in and out, the date, and what it was for. One place, not four.
2. Two signatures on anything leaving the account, with three people named, so one person’s illness cannot freeze the group.
3. Receipts kept, and checked before anything is paid.
4. One number read out at every meeting. What is in the account, and how much of it is already spoken for.

Not the treasurer’s job: deciding what to spend. That belongs to the meeting. Keeping the two apart protects whoever holds the money when somebody later disagrees with a purchase.

And the half nobody writes down, which is what the group owes them. Never being the only signatory. Never being asked to lend the group money without a date for getting it back. And being allowed to hand the job on without that being treated as leaving.

The rest of the founding jobs are in starting a group from nothing.

The grant, and what a logo costs

Take the money. Think much harder before you take the name.

The practical part rules most new groups out for a year. Funders ask for a project budget, bank details, a governing document and your most recent accounts. A group formed in March holds none of those in April.

Grant money also arrives restricted. It is tied to what you asked for, it is not your free reserves, and an unspent balance is generally returned. A grant for a schools project cannot quietly become the hall hire.

Then the judgement. A funder’s logo travels. It goes on your poster, into the local paper, and into every room you enter for two years. Sometimes it opens the door, because a name people trust says you are real. Sometimes it closes one, because it hands an objector a ready line about who is really running this.

Which way it lands depends on who you need next year, not on principle. Two questions before you say yes.

• Who do we need in a room in twelve months, and does this name help or hinder with them?
• If this funder asked us to drop a line from a statement, what would we say, and what happens to the money then?

Some groups take the training, the insurance advice and the introductions, and decline the branding. That is a settlement rather than a compromise, and it is available before you sign.

The three numbers to have by Friday

Fill in the blanks132 words

From memory, no scrolling. What does the year cost with a free room? What is the most one person may spend without asking? Who is owed money right now?

Then these three.

If it is this week, then I will ring the two places that might lend us a room and ask each to put a price in an email.

If somebody has already paid for something, then at the next meeting I will read out what they are owed and name the date it goes back to them.

And the obstacle, because it is always this one. If we are £62 short and the date is close, then I will ask three named people for the whole amount, one at a time, rather than posting an appeal in the group chat.