new preschool treasurer asking for help! (please)

[bumpybecky]

I thought I'd better stop hijacking the other thread, so have started a new one!

old thread here..

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/preschool/603173-committees-and-preschools-running-out-of-help full-parents

anyway - situation is we're a small preschool (16 children max) and lost a huge amount of money last year we're solvent (just) thanks to two previous year's profits. I'm currently trying to work out our long term finances but have run into trouble. Most of my questions can only really be answered by our senior staff member. I asked her some last week, she was going to get answers to me by today, but is off sick. I'm hoping some of you more expert preschool committee members can help!

Can anyone tell me....

how much we get paid per funded (3 and 4 yo) per session (2.5hrs)?

whether we're allowed to ask parents to pay for the snack even though their children are funded? (I'm guessing we can ask for donations towards, but not make it complusary)

anything about sustainibility grants? have been told if we can prove we've got children waiting to join (when they're older) we might be able to get cash now to help us manage

do the charities commission require audited accounts every year? as I'm fairly sure we've not submitted any for the last two years trading.....

thanks for any help!

You should be charging at least the same as the funded amount otherwise you will have to justify why not! In theory you should charge more because of the higher staff ratio required.

I think you need to raise your unfunded price to match the funded amount as of half term. I would explain clearly that the pre-school has been running at a loss for the last 2 years and therefore the fees need to increase.

As far as I know (have checked most) no other local preschool charges as much for 2.5yo as the funded children bring in. I'm worried that if we raise the fees from £6 to £8.50ish our unfunded children would cut back on sessions as they'd not be able to afford the extra cost

Also with only two children unfunded it'd only bring in a max. £15 a week for lots of potential bad feeling.

At the moment I'm thinking of raising the fees to £7 or even £7.50 from January (we traditionally increase then). Will have to see what rest of the committee (what committee?!) say

What do the others charge? I think you need to find out lots and lots about all the others to be competitive and offer something different to make yourselves more attractive. I wonder if you can increase to the correct amount and then offer a discount if 3 or 4 sessions are attended as a way of getting around it.

I think you need to look at it carefully because I'm sure you have to justify why you charge less?

Sorry, I'm getting confused about the 50% bit, I think you've got it right that it's just 50% overall.

We do charge less for unfunded children, mainly because until very recently our main 'competitor' was charging the same as us for a longer session so we just couldn't get away with it. We've recently reviewed it and have decided that we just don't need to increase it to this level as we have surplus money every year as things stand. So we will increase it a bit and raise the staff pay a bit too.

No, your 3 yo child would count as a 3 yo for the ratios, not a 2 yo. I don't know why Ofsted would count a 4 yo as a 5 yo as the ratios are the same for both

Dropping your staffing would save you much more than raising your prices I suspect.