Funding opportunities for youth and heritage organisations

24 July 2014

As a fundraiser generating funds for programmes connecting children and young people with arts and culture, it is great to see examples of funders taking a proactive approach to broker a relationship between youth-focused organisations and culturally-focused organisations.

An interesting example of this is Heritage Lottery Fund’s ‘Young Roots’ Programme. The programme funds projects that engage young people, aged 11 to 25, with heritage in the UK. In order to be eligible for funding, your project must exhibit a partnership between heritage and youth organisations.

Young Roots’ design is drawn from Heritage Lottery Fund research noting that heritage organisations often lack the resources to engage with young people, and that youth workers are often not aware of the wealth of opportunities offered by heritage for youth work.

Programme Goals

The programme is intended to:

provide new opportunities for a wide range of young people aged 11 to 25 to help shape and deliver engaging heritage projects;
bring heritage and youth organisations together to combine knowledge and experience; and
create opportunities to celebrate young people’s achievements in the project and share their learning with the wider community

Funding Available

A minimum of £10,000 and a maximum of £50,000.

Application Process

Applications can be submitted at any time and are assessed within eight weeks. Your application may then be assessed at a monthly advisory meeting at your local HLF office, so factor in around 3 months to hear a result. You can contact your local HLF office for more information about this process.

Costs Covered

Applicants are encouraged to request funding for all costs that are directly incurred as a result of the project. This may include: staffing, direct delivery, mentoring, equipment, accreditation, evaluation.

There is no requirement for match funding or contributions from your organisation.

You can explore the Young Roots Programme further (including programme outcomes) here

For application guidelines visit here

For a detailed case study of a Young Roots-funded projects see here

Follow the #YoungRoots on twitter

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