Paul Hamlyn Foundation Youth Fund

One of the largest core funding opportunities in this directory, and the hardest to get. Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Youth Fund makes strategic three-year investments in organisations working with young people aged 14 to 25 who face systemic inequity. The grant covers core operating costs, so your website is simply part of what it can pay for, along with salaries and everything else that keeps you running. Be clear-eyed though: this is not a website grant with extra zeros. Around one in ten applicants succeed, and the Foundation funds organisations driving systemic change, not service delivery alone.

• What they fund: Core operating costs, meaning salaries, organisational and delivery costs, for the full three years. They prefer to fund at the maximum amount and term, and never below £30,000 a year. Notably, they will not fund project-based activity at all, so the website should never be the ask; it is something the core grant quietly covers.
• Typical grants: Up to £50,000 per year over three years, £150,000 in total.
• Who can apply: Charities, community organisations, social enterprises and not-for-profit companies with an asset lock, with turnover between £30,000 and £3.5 million, where at least half of the organisation’s focus is work with and for 14 to 25 year olds. Newly registered organisations without independently examined or audited accounts are excluded.
• The angle: The application is entirely about how your organisation drives change: tackling root causes, influencing policy and practice, improving systems, shifting attitudes and narratives, with young people’s voice and power at the centre. Excellent direct delivery on its own will not get funded. If systems change genuinely describes your work, three years of core funding transforms what you can invest in, and your digital infrastructure is part of that.
• Worth knowing: Applications are rolling, the process is a written application followed by an interview, and decisions take around four months. The Foundation makes about 20 Youth Fund grants a year, funding 10 to 12% of applicants, so read their material on asset-based working before you write a word. Work focused solely on employability or education pathways is excluded. If your organisation works on migration rather than youth, the Foundation’s Migration Fund runs on the same rolling basis at up to £60,000 a year.