Our criteria

To be eligible for investment and support you should be an emerging social organisation that offers practical learning opportunities to young people aged 14 to 25. We don’t support programmes that are delivered by established charities or businesses unless they plan it to ‘spin-out’ as a separate organisation.

We are looking for individuals (or even better, teams) that are committed to solving problems facing young people with groundbreaking ideas.

We will evaluate your idea on the following five criteria:

Social impact
We want ideas that have a profound social impact both on the individuals you work with and, where possible, on society as a whole. We are interested in activities that benefit a broad range of young people as opposed to a specific group. We want to hear what social need or problem it is that you are trying to address; who your target group is; what you will deliver and what impact you think that will have.

Innovation
We are excited by ideas that depart from what is already out there, particularly ones that are using practical learning and developing young people's ‘soft’ or non-cognitive skills. Sometimes this can be bringing together things that exist already; or thinking up new ways in which existing ideas can be implemented more successfully.

Sustainability
We know that most social enterprises rely on some form of grant funding but we believe in minimizing dependence on charitable grants to provide services to users. Grant funding is difficult to predict, involves complex applications, and may have time consuming compliance procedures which have to be in place on application with no guarantee of success. Social organisations often achieve financial sustainability through selling products and services to clients such as a local authority or a school, other businesses or individuals. We recognise that a mix of revenue streams (perhaps include contract funding, corporate sponsorship and grants) is often the best way of being able to cover the costs of providing your services, and providing profits that can be reinvested into growing your social impact. We will only make an investment if we think that your idea will go on to generate its own income and make any necessary repayments.

Scalability
We realise that some projects are best suited to a certain community or group but we would like to fund projects that can have a significant impact on a large number of young people and that are ambitious for how they plan to evolve and grow. Through using technology, or volunteers, or through an imaginative model for how someone else could replicate your success, we want to work with organisations that use their funding to go further. We know there are lots of great local projects out there but we do not make investments unless you have a specific plan to scale the project up to have a national reach and impact.

Passionate, competent people
We know that the ideas don't necessarily translate into successful organisations unless they are lead by great people. We want to know who you are, who you are working with and that you have what it takes to make the organisation a success.