10. Design the s/EAP budget

The IFRC budget follows the IFRC plan and budget. This outlines the sector interventions that fall under the ‘planned operation’ and cross cutting ‘enabling approaches’.

The operational matrix in the s/EAP and the budget should correspond to each other. For example, if two trainings are planned under shelter, settlement and housing in year 1 and year 3, then these trainings should be included under the same sector in the budget template, with one line each for YEAR_1 and YEAR_3 respectively.

Planned operations sectors and enabling approaches:

IFRC ‘planned operation’ sectors (11 in total)

• Shelter, Settlement and Housing; Livelihoods; Multipurpose Cash; Health; WASH; Protection, Gender and Inclusion; Education; Migration; Risk Reduction; Community Engagement and Accountability; and Environmental Sustainability

IFRC Enabling approaches (3 in total)

• Coordination and Partnership (activities for stakeholders external to the RCRC)
• Secretariat Services (dedicated for IFRC activities)
• National Society Development (dedicated for National Society activities)

Eligible types of activities in an s/EAP:

• Readiness activities are any ongoing costs and services, including HR and logistics, that are necessary for the National Society to remain ready to activate and implement early action activities These costs should be spread out annually over the five-year lifespan of an EAP or two-year lifespan for an sEAP.
• Prepositioning activities, enables National Societies to procure and preposition the stock required for early action, so it is available once a trigger is reached. The stock should have a shelf-life of two years or five years, aligned with the respective lifespan of an s/EAP. The budget can include related costs such as warehousing, transportation and insurance. Note that stock that has a shelf life shorter than five years / two years such as nutrition, pharmaceuticals and medical items may not be eligible for prepositioning. As an alternative,  National Society’s should identify suppliers who can supply these items within the lead time.
• Early action activities are activities that are done to reduce or mitigate the impact of a hazard on at risk communities. Early action activities should be completed within the lead time; however, some expenditures will be eligible and follow up cost may be incurred after the end of the early action lead time (e.g. debriefing volunteers, monitoring activities, lessons learned workshop). These activities need to be completed within the operational timeframe, normally three months after the activation.

Examples of the operational matrix from the EAP template

Before you start inputting the budget – make sure you select the protocol type in cell K5 – from the dropdown menu, select either EA Protocol or Simplified EAP.  This will automatically set the budget caps and will alert you if the budget cap is overspent.

Now that you have selected the correct template type (cell K5 = EA Protocol or Simplified EAP), read carefully the last tab, ‘guidelines’ for completing the budget template. If you follow the principles here, you will understand how to use the budget template correctly

Budget caps for EAPs and sEAPs:

The maximum budget for a National Society for a full EAP is CHF 900,000. The maximum budget for a National Society for a simplified EAP is CHF 200,000. These figures must be inclusive of the IFRC indirect or programmes and services support recovery (PSSR) of 6.5 per cent.

The IFRC delegation supporting the National Society can add 20,000 for a simplified EAP or CHF 50,000 to support the maintenance and activation of an s/EAP. This sum must include the 6.5 per cent IFRC indirect or programmes and service support recovery (PSSR). The National Society and the IFRC should use the same budget template.

When filling out the budget template, most cells can be copy and paste, except for four columns, where options must be selected manually from the dropdown menu:

• In column C: use the dropdown menu to indicate the type of activity: Readiness, Pre Pos Stock 1 and Pre Pos Stock 2 (only EA Protocol uses Pre Pos Stock 2), and also early action 1 and Early Action 2 (only EA Protocol uses Early Action 2).
• In column D: use the dropdown menu to indicate who will be implementing the activity: Host NS, IFRC or PNS, if a partner has a role in the s/EAP.
• In column E: use the dropdown menu to indicate when the activity will be done:

For readiness, indicate which year the activity will be done (YEAR 1 – YEAR 5 – for an EA Protocol or YEAR 1 – YEAR 2 – for a simplified EAP. If you don’t see these options in the dropdown menu – make sure that you have selected the correct protocol type, cell K5, ‘EA Protocol’ or ‘simplified EAP’). If the activity is done 5 times, you will need to copy this column five times and allocate the five to ‘YEAR 1’, ‘YEAR 2’, through to ‘YEAR 5’. Note, you cannot budget the activity for five years in just one line.

For prepositioned stock, under the simplified EAPs, all stock is always budgeted in ‘YEAR 1’. For a full EAP, stock should be budgeted twice, one allocation in ‘YEAR 1’ and one allocation for the second activation which should be coded to ‘ACTIV_02’. Following the first activation, the second allocation will be transferred, so that the stock can be procured and prepositioned in advance of a second activation.

For early actions, should be budgeted under ‘ACTIV_01’ for the sEAP and for a full EAP, the first activation is budgeted under ‘ACTIV_01’ and ‘ACTIV_02’ for the second activation of a full EAP.

• In column F: indicate using the dropdown menu the appropriate budget group. The full list of budget groups can be found under the excel tab called ‘budget group’.

Before you complete your budget, make sure that it meets all the guidelines:

• Maximum 65 per cent of the total budget can be allocated for readiness activities and prepositioned activities combined. It is up to National Societies to decide how to allocate the budget over these two types of costs. National Societies that request a high proportion of readiness costs (more than 35per cent) may be requested to justify the allocation. Also, National Societies who have more than one EAP may be requested to demonstrate that readiness costs are diminishing.
• The National Society may include administrative costs of up to 5 per cent of the total budget. If the 5 per cent rate is not used, the National Society will need to list out each administrative cost individually generated during the early action phase (finance, logistics, electricity, support staff, etc.)
• The monitoring and evaluation budget should be maximum 5 per cent of overall the budget (CHF 47,500 maximum for a full EAP or CHF 10,000 maximum for an sEAP).