From our Chief Financial Officer.

Over the past few months I have been increasingly asked how centres can improve their revenue without doing more fundraisers. So I thought I would touch on a couple of ideas below:

Ensure every child is enrolled – don’t forget your babies
Every child attending Playcentre is entitled to bulk funding and this includes the younger siblings attending with their parents/caregivers during session time. A baby attending once a week for three hours could bring over $100 extra into the centre each term. If they are attending anyway, make sure your centre is getting the benefit!

Increase funding through increased centre hours
One of the easiest ways to increase revenue is to utilise our full possible licensed hours. All our centres are able to be licensed to operate for 4 hours per session, for many centres adding another 30-60 minutes for a shared lunch, set up or pack up time can increase funding revenue by as much as 25%.

Better returns on Money in the bank
We are aware that many centre have a reasonable amount of cash that is in current accounts receiving very little interest revenue. Putting money on Term deposits can increase revenue by about $200-$300 per $10,000. As an organisation we receive our funding in three blocks of the year, this doesn’t mean you need to keep 1/3 of revenue on current accounts, consider using 30, 60 and 90 day term deposits to allow for the cash flow needs of the centre but still get a stronger rate of interest. It may sound like hard work, but it’s a lot easier than most fundraisers!
For those who don’t want to look into term deposits we have also twisted the arm of our Federation bank ASB to extend their Education Account offer to our centres. For more information click here.  This is a current account which gives lower fees and increased interest (although still below a term deposit).

To be eligible for this account ASB do have a couple of pre requisites one of which is that the entity must receive bulk funding through Playcentre Federation and must have their own charity number.

For Playcentre who have not registered with charities there is information on our website to assist with any centres who wish to register – click here.