Here we do not interfere with the content or subject matter of the application, each person decides on their own artistic competence and the grant-giving bodies have their own priorities, which vary greatly. Naturally, each foundation’s own application guidelines should be consulted.
However, a budget is something that most often needs to be done when applying for a grant, for example to make a performance.
Get started early
Boring, but true. Of course, you can do an application or its budget in one go and get results, but it’s also useful to tweak and polish over time.
How much does it cost?
Are you paying a salary or a grant to the team?
If you operate under a company with a corporate identity, everyone must be paid for their work, and then the budget must also take into account fringe benefits, holiday pay and insurance. Minimum wages can be found in the collective agreement, but for example, the average salary for a lighting designer in 2024 was €3,700/month.
A working group convened for a project can pay its members for their work as a grant if they have already been named in the grant application. This can be thought of as a number of months of work, for example. The monthly working allowance is determined by each grant-giving body individually and ranges from €2000 to €3800 (2025). No insurance is required for grants of less than four months.
Think about how much time and money adults actually spend
Don’t underestimate your work or the time you spend. It is unprofessional to claim that a full-length stage play can be rehearsed in two weeks. Allow time, and thus pay everyone for the time it takes to complete the work. Allow time for planning and post-production. If you are applying for a grant for non-working activities, e.g. for material purchases, equipment hire or space rental, say so in your budget – do you have to buy everything or can you hire some of it?
If you don’t ask, you can’t get
If you apply for funding for three months but only get funding for two months, you may want to consider scaling down your work. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work the other way round.
Appreciate your own work and the work of others
Even if you’re willing to do some voluntary work yourself, don’t expect others to. Visibility and contacts don’t pay the bills. However, there are times when you want to do the work even if the funding isn’t quite perfect, so it’s good to recognise the value of free work. In some grant application statements, you can also report on the volunteer work. At its heart, it is a question of what someone’s free time costs and whether they are willing to give their own free time to others in a work-like environment.
Does the budget reflect sustainability: ecological, social and economic?
Challenge yourself to think: is production sustainable? What is its burden on the environment, does the production allow for equal work with respect for all, and is the production financially balanced or is someone being stretched? Who or who might be stretched? Is it possible to make solutions more sustainable?
Life cycle
How will production be recycled when it reaches the end of its life cycle? The more iterations, the smaller the footprint. Think in advance about what will happen to the materials when the work is no longer performed. You can budget money for this too, someone has to do the post-production work. For example, you could put the remaining costumes, set elements or the fair mat you bought on a circular pallet at Goodstock https://www.goodstock.fi.
Resourcing accessibility
The world is not the same for all of us. How do you consider accessibility in the experience of your art? Are people with visual, hearing or mobility impairments taken into account? And is it appropriate for your work to produce background material or handouts in multiple languages? Accessibility might be a larger font size, a carefully mixed soundscape or a movable viewing bench. Costs can be budgeted to promote accessibility, e.g. for the production of translation texts.
Ask for an opinion
Ask a friend for comments on your application. This is not a spell check, but a content check – did you make your point clearly?
Leave on the shelf to rest if you can
No matter how good the idea, the application and the budget, sometimes you still don’t get the funding, or you get so little that you can’t make the work. Then you may wonder whether the project can be broken down into smaller pieces or left in a desk drawer for a few more rounds of grants. If the idea is good, it will get funded at some point. Some funding bodies give feedback on applications, so it’s worth taking advantage of these opportunities. Remember, a rejection is not a personal insult – chin up and keep on applying!
Example of budgeting for a stage production
The box office receipts from the show have not been included in the budget, as the working group donated them to nature conservation. Viewers could choose between four different ticket prices, knowing where the money would go. The City Theatre ticket also includes a return public transport ticket before and after the performance.