Young Gamechangers Fund

Grant Round 2  – Eligibility Criteria and Key Information

Thank you for your interest in applying to Grant Round 2. The Young Gamechangers Fund supports youth-led social action across all parts of the UK. Find out more about our funding streams and opportunities in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and England below.

There are two types of funding available in this round: 

  • Funding for individual activists 
  • Funding for youth-led groups or organisations with an annual income of £100,000 or less

One-year grants of up to £20,000 are available for both individuals and groups along with one year of support from our delivery partners, Global Fund for Children and Restless Development. 

Young Gamechangers Fund grant process is codesigned with our Youth Steering Group. They also form the panel of young people who will assess applications and allocate the funding. 

To learn more about the Young Gamechangers Fund, our aims and our funders, please head to www.younggamechangersfund.org

How does this link to the Co-op Foundation?

Co-op Foundation’s youth-led strategy has 4 strategic priorities:

  • Safe communities
  • Sustainable communities
  • Diverse, equitable and inclusive communities
  • Communities that prioritise youth activism, shared power and transparent governance.

To be eligible to apply for the Young Gamechangers Fund you must meet at least one of these strategic priorities and will be asked to select this in the application form.

What does the Young Gamechangers Fund support? 

The Young Gamechangers Fund welcomes applications from young people aged 10 – 25, living in the UK, who are creating positive social change in their communities, through:

  • Activism and awareness raising
  • Campaigning
  • Disrupting and challenging norms
  • Building co-operation

To be funded by Young Gamechangers Fund the activities or project outlined in your application must focus on at least one of these areas.

In Grant Round 2, the Youth Steering Group have also identified two focus areas that they hope to see represented in applications, but are not essential requirements for receiving the grant. The Youth Steering Group are keen to receive applications from young people seeking to:

  • Build community cohesion and bring people together
  • Design and test new and innovative approaches to established challenges 

If your planned social action project and programme activities will address one or both of these focus areas, please make sure to highlight this in your application. For support and advice on this you can contact the team at ygf@globalfundforchildren.org 

Who are we looking to fund in this round?

  • Any young person, 10-25, who meets one or more of the Co-op Foundation Strategic Priorities, and will create positive social change through one or more of the approaches outlined above, is eligible to submit an application for funding.

However, the Youth Steering Group recognise that not all young people have the same access to opportunities like this, and are committed to working toward fairer access for all young people. 

For Grant Round 2 the Youth Steering Group have identified several groups who they feel are underrepresented, and will prioritise applications from young people who have experience of:

  • The criminal justice system
  • Barriers to accessing education
  • Living in rural/isolated communities
  • Living in coastal towns and communities
  • Seeking asylum, being a refugee
  • Social and financial barriers to accessing opportunities

Note: This is about what you as a young person have experienced in your life. The social action focus of your application, and the issues you want to address does not have to be one of these.

What do we mean by prioritise?

Applications from young people who meet one or more of the Youth Steering Groups priorities, and also meet the other eligibility requirements for the fund, will automatically be taken forward to the second stage of assessment. At this point all applications will be assessed on merit and funding allocated to top scoring projects. Being in one of the underrepresented priority groups does not guarantee you will receive funding.  

Young Gamechangers Fund is a youth-led initiative 

The Youth Steering Group has developed their definition of a youth-led approach for the fund. The application must be completed by a young person aged 10-25, and should clearly demonstrate that the project, activism or campaign has been developed and created by young people and will be led by them. Where the application is being submitted through a group or organisation, they will need to demonstrate that young people are at the heart of the organisation’s leadership and are proactive participants in decision making.

For groups and organisations, priority will be given to those that are able to demonstrate that 75% of their leadership are young people aged 10-25 (and who meet all other eligibility criteria).

If you are an adult-led organisation working with young people you are eligible to apply. However, it is vital that you are supporting young people to develop and lead the activities that the fund will support – including having a young person as the named applicant. Sharing how the organisation is working towards increasing youth leadership will be essential for your application to be selected for funding.

For more information on supporting young people, youth leadership and information about fiscal sponsors , please see Frequently Asked Questions and Glossary of Terms 

Note: Applications that meet the youth-led priority by demonstrating that 75% of their leadership are young people, and also meet the other eligibility requirements for the fund, will automatically be taken forward to the second stage of assessment. At this point all applications will be assessed on merit and funding allocated to top scoring projects.

Note: The panel will develop an assessment process that will ensure representation of projects across all countries of the UK. Groups/organisations based in England will have a greater chance of success applying to the specific project funding that is only available to them.

You can learn more about these types of funding in our Frequently Asked Questions

The Young Gamechangers Fund is not able to support:

  • One-off activities, fundraisers, events, travel or scholarships that do not contribute to bigger community change
  • Local offices, affiliates, or projects of large NGOs, governments, or intergovernmental organisations
  • Activities that support or oppose candidates for public office or party politics 
  • Activities or work that promote religious believes, tries to convert participants to a particular religion or requires participants to join or convert to a religion to take part 
  • Organisations that, in policy or in practice, discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, caste, religion, gender identity, disability, socio-economic status, or sexual orientation 
  • Groups that conduct or support violent activities or violate criminal law
  • Input VAT reclaimable by itself and Grant Recipients from HMRC
  • Depreciation, amortisation, or impairment of its own fixed assets.
  • The acquisition or improvement of fixed assets by the Grant Recipient (unless the grant is explicitly for capital use – this will be stipulated in the Grant Offer Letter).
  • Interest payments (including service charge payments for financial leases).
  • Gifts to individuals other than promotional items with a value of no more than £10 a year to any one individual.
  • Entertaining (entertaining for this purpose means anything that would be a taxable benefit to the person being entertained, according to current UK tax regulations).
  • The Use to purchase of buildings or land.
  • Activities that make profits for private gain.
  • Loan payments.

If you have any questions about our eligibility criteria, check out our Frequently Asked Questions or get in touch –  ygf@globalfundforchildren.org

Successful applicants from Grant Round 1, who received funding and still have an active grant from Young Gamechangers Fund, are not eligible to apply for funding in Grant Round 2.