Youth Leadership Fund

Yesterday was a big day for The Youth Leadership Fund.  We held our investment committee for the Reaching Out funding stream and decided which of the excellent finalists we would support with between £50-100,000 each!  Altogether we have committed £602,000 - (wow I wish I could spend that money on a shopping spree!)

I can't tell you who they are just yet, so watch this space for the news!  

We received a respectable 97 applications to The Youth of Today Scaling Up fund in December for Round 1 and were thrilled to see some really interesting and exciting projects there.

We felt that 43 of these were eligible for grants and expert reviewers from third sector youth organisations and consortium partners of The Youth of Today and a keen group of young people from our Youth Leadership Team helped us to assess and score these applications against our criteria.

The Finalists for Reaching Out have been selected.

After a grueling few days we have re-surfaced from our assessments of the Reaching out expressions of interest.

We were thrilled to have so much interest - receiving 286 applications in all and those applicants including some amazing ideas!

On 25th August 2009, the Young Foundation hosted a workshop for the final 12 applicants to Scaling up Round 1 of the Leadership Fund. 

The workshop day was strictly empowering for everyone who attended. From the youth leadership team, Hiran, Nikita, Hamdi and I were present, and we were given the opportunity to interact with the final applicants.

We've been buried under application forms for 2 weeks and we are just resurfacing now! - I am SO excited about the ideas for projects we have received in Scaling Up Round 1.  This blog entry is for the 107 applicants who applied to the fund, and a few pointers for anyone looking to apply in future rounds.

Firstly, a few things we were pleased about:

We were so excited to see every region of England represented - and to get 107 applications, especially in the short time frame and it being the summer holidays. 

Today is the day of the deadline - its at 5 pm today so make sure your electronic application forms are in by then, or we won't be able to take them.

The address to send hard copies of anything is:

The Youth of Today Leadership Fund

Young Foundation

18 Victoria Park Square

London

E2 9PF

You may be aware that on the 3rd July we launched our first funding round for the Scaling up programme.  The deadline is tomorrow at 5 pm so get cracking on your applications if you are intending to apply!

We've had a few questions about the fund and so I thought it would help to post the answer up here for people who haven't got round to asking yet. 

On Saturday 11 July, the Young Foundation held an induction day for their Youth Leadership Team (YLT). The YLT will help sift through the Fund applications and contribute to the decision making considering which organisations benefit from the money. 

Here is some feedback from some of the YLT: 

If you give it a minute to think about (I'm sure that many of us have done this in the past) this can be quite a complicated question to answer.  I always remember chatting with my friends about what they would do with the money if they won the Euro Millions or a sudden windfall from a great, great aunt twice removed who they didn’t know they had (like that C4 TV programme Secret Family Fortunes).