The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) has launched a new business tool, Capacity Manager, to help third sector bodies manage their spending on overheads more efficiently.

The online tool can be used to examine all the main types of overhead costs and can help judge the effectiveness of spending in different areas of business.

It can assist managers to benchmark their spending against similar businesses, as well as make a case to funding and commissioning bodies to support investment.

It is available to use for free at www.capacitymanager.org.uk.

Capacity Manager has been developed using funding from Capacitybuilders' National Support Service programme.

ACEVO's Project Manager, Dionne Nelson, said: "Capacity Manager is the next step following our Full Cost Recovery (FCR) programme which enables organisations to fully cost complex projects.

"Our research suggests that investors can be unwilling to accept that costs such as management, human resources or finance are necessary to support the delivery of a service and often dismiss these costs from bids. Capacity Manager gives senior managers a process for thinking about their overheads, and the tools to assess how efficiently they are currently managed."

Matt Leach, chief executive of Capacitybuilders, added: "We want to offer all the help we can to third sector organisations to ensure that they are operating as efficiently as possible. Tools like Capacity Manager will help them to develop a really robust organisational base to build from."

Share Story: