The Evidence into Action programme will develop a series of focused funding and learning programmes to directly influence practitioners, employers, funders and commissioners, ensuring that stakeholders are supported to understand and enact evidence-informed change in the way that they do things.
The programme aims to discover how evidence can be translated effectively to help frontline delivery organisations understand and use evidence-based interventions to support young people into good jobs. At the same time, we aim to encourage other funders and commissioners to support evidence-based approaches, with an initial focus on the evidence contained within our Youth Employment Toolkit.
Our Evidence into Action programme aims to achieve the following:
- Improve knowledge mobilisation across the youth employment sector
- Support stakeholders to adopt evidence-based solutions to youth employment
- Create a co-funding opportunity. We are open to working with other like-minded funders, who are interested in our approach, to increase the size and impact of this fund. If you are interested, please contact [email protected] to discuss.
The first round of Evidence into Action funding will focus on:
- Key audience – Practitioners and funders.
- Intervention – Vocational training (including on-job and off-the-job, but excluding apprenticeships). Based on current evidence in our Youth Employment Toolkit, these interventions are likely to have a moderate positive impact on youth employment outcomes, as a component of a youth employment intervention. Research suggests that off-the-job and on-the-job training is likely to have a high impact on employment outcomes for young people who face additional barriers.
- Target group of young people – Specific UK ethnic minoritised communities most likely to become not in education, employment or training (NEET) aged 16-24.
- Geographical – The Youth Futures data dashboard and additional research will enable us to identify places with large populations of the target cohorts of young people in specific local authorities with relevant risk of NEET index factors across London, Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West. Further details on specific areas will be made available once the fund opens for applications.
- Funding approach for delivery organisations – Core costs and delivery funding alongside in-depth learning, capacity building and events for up to three years. Grants of up to £75k per year to delivery organisations.
- Learning and capacity building approach – Dedicated support over the length of the programme to provide grantees with organisational and evaluation capacity building support. In addition, there will be research expertise to support the understanding of current evidence relevant to practice.
- Fund size – £3million commitment from Youth Futures over three years with the intention of increasing the fund with co-funders in 2024.
Who can apply for funding?
Strategic Partner
Over the full length of the programme we will fund strategic partner/s to provide delivery organisations support with:
Capacity & knowledge building
- Help delivery organisations both obtain and share good practice and knowledge through networks and events. Our evaluation of our infrastructure funding highlighted that infrastructure organisations are an essential ingredient of the youth employment landscape, helping to bring its different parts closer together.
- Support to understand organisational, fundraising, delivery capacity and training needs, and provide bespoke events and consultancy to funded delivery organisations
Learning and research support
- Lead and co-ordinate learning across the cohort and develop resources, events and guidance for the wider youth employment sector
We are now accepting applications for a strategic partner to provide delivery organisations with the support listed above. We intend to make one grant award only, for a strategic partner. We intend to make one grant award only, for a strategic partner to support our Evidence into Action and Connected Futures programmes. Full details of the strategic partner role, our requirements and guidance on how to apply can be found in the associated PDF guidance document, here. If your organisation is interested, please read this document in full before applying.
Applications can only be made using our online form. The deadline for applications has now passed.
If you have any questions please contact us using the telephone number or email address contained within the guidance document.
Frontline Delivery Organisations
We will fund frontline delivery organisations that are experience led and /or experienced in delivering within the target areas with deep links and track record of supporting young people from UK minoritised ethnic backgrounds that are at risk of being NEET. This round of funding is looking for organisations interested in or currently providing youth employment / employability projects that include work based / vocational training alongside complimentary activities.
We want to work with delivery organisations that are genuinely interested in being part of a learning journey to consider and implement improvements to support offered to young people. We want to build a small portfolio of organisations that can help us find scalable solutions of how practitioner behaviour change can be embedded within the delivery of work based / vocational training young employment interventions for the long term.
Details of how to apply to become a funded delivery organisation will be available in early 2024.
