Deadline: 17-Jan-22
The Youth Futures Foundation is pleased to announce the Connected Futures Fund to support young people to get good jobs through pioneering local partnerships.
Young people are looking for changes to the whole system – across different services and sectors, not just improvements within individual agencies or interventions. Young people need:
- holistic support that responds to their situation by taking their needs and strengths into account
- aligned services that work together to help them achieve their goals, rather than pulling in different directions
- connected services with effective communication and coordination across organisations and sectors so that they don’t have to navigate everything for themselves
- consistent support over time
What can Connected Futures funding be used for?
The Foundation is offering restricted investment for programme costs. If your application is shortlisted, they will ask you for a detailed explanation of how you will use the funding over the next 18 months, why this is needed and how this will support your partnership and young people.
You may request funding for any activities to help you understand the problem and mobilise people around a shared ambition for change.:
- Salaries and staff costs, including existing staff
- Costs of young people’s and/or volunteers’ time and participation
- Research to understand young people’s experiences or how services and agencies currently work with each other
- Exploring evidence or experiences from other places
- Data/cost-benefit analysis or evaluation to make the case for new approaches
- Co-design or prototyping to try out new ways of working at small scale
Funding Information
- In phase 1 they expect to award grants of between £75,000 and £125,000 of restricted investment per partnership.
- You can apply for less than £75,000. However, this figure is based on the assessment of the effort and cost required in phase 1. They would advise you to think carefully about whether you can achieve what you want to in phase 1 for significantly less than this.
- The initial commitment will be for 18 months in phase 1.
- However, they advise you to front load your activities into the first 12 months.
What is the learning approach?
- Learning and evaluation support is provided in addition to the grant. For Phase 1, they will commission an independent learning partner to help you explore your problem and the wider system while developing your ambition for change. They use this approach because it is important for you have support that is independent of the decision-making process.
- This partner will be an independent source of advice, quality assurance and support. They will help you to:
- Design and deliver activities, access evidence, and analyse data.
- Exchange learning and insights with the other places involved in Phase 1
- Deliver reports that Youth Futures can share.
- The Foundation will:
- Commission local labour-market analysis to provide a snapshot of youth employment, helping you to pinpoint problems, make the case for change and support baselining for future evaluation.
- Make available additional funding for specialist research or consultancy over and above the Phase 1 grant, allocated on a case-by-case basis as needs and issues emerge.
Eligibility Criteria
- You must nominate one partner to be accountable for the grant. They will make the grant to this partner and they should then distribute funding to the other partners and procure services or activities as required. The accountable partner must have a minimum turnover of £100,000 per annum and have been in operation for a minimum of three years. This organisation must be a registered charity, not-for-profit organisation or public sector body legally incorporated in England. No Youth Futures grant funding can be spent on activities delivered by ‘for private profit’ organisations.
- The other partners should be legally incorporated organisations in England. Your partnership must include representatives from at least two of the four target sectors (statutory; education and training; VCSE; employers). You should also nominate a lead organisation that will be responsible for delivery in Phase 1. This does not have to be the same organisation as the accountable partner.
- You should explain why they are best placed to lead by demonstrating their track record of working within the place, understanding of the local context and existing connections within the place.
For more information, visit https://youthfuturesfoundation.org/our-work/invest/connected-futures/