Navigating the cost-of-living crisis: Learning from the first year of the UK Youth Fund – Cost of Living  

In 2023, UK Youth, in partnership with the Pears Foundation, distributed more than £4.5 million in unrestricted grant-funding to youth organisations across the United Kingdom to support them to continue to deliver high quality youth work to young people during a challenging economic climate.

Here, the UK Youth Impact Team reflects on the first year of the fund and the impact it has made. 

You can find full findings in the report here. 

There is no doubting the current cost-of-living crisis continues to have a serious impact on youth organisations and the young people they support – see: How the Cost of Living Crisis is affecting the youth sector.

Through the UK Youth Fund – Cost of Living, UK Youth has been working closely with grantees to understand how they are using their grant to navigate these challenging times and  learning from their experiences. So what have we learnt? 

Four out of every five UK Youth grantees reported they feel “very” or “slightly” optimistic about their organisational future, but still reported they could benefit from extra funding for core costs and staffing wages.

This positive outlook is partly due to the ongoing and unrestricted multi-year funding, which has given grantees some scope to think further ahead about fundraising opportunities whist also using funds to best support their original mission – for example, by keeping services free for young people or offering open-access youth provision or possibly by extending their opening hours.  

The opportunity provided by multi-year funding has given some scope for grantees for wider strategic planning but this is still ‘off-set’ by ensuring they can provide for the more immediate needs of the organisation and their young people.

More than a quarter of grantees reported they have used parts of their funding to buy basic necessities such as food, clothing and health/sanitary products for the young people they are engaging. This was perhaps higher than we originally expected, and shows the potential challenge of the current climate for young people and their families.

UK Youth found this sobering news and will continue to explore this with grantees over the next year, to understand the impact this has on their delivery and what it may mean for our wider network in how they are continuing to utilise funds to support young people.

Although they already felt confident in these areas, grantees said they would value extra training and support in key elements such as governance and planning, fundraising, recruiting and managing volunteers, as well as measuring impact.

They were interested in learning more on specific topics such as promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion, trauma-informed practice, mental health for young people, and mentoring. Many were keen to share learning across the network to support the development of best practices and explore future approaches.

UK Youth will continue to look at its offer for grantees in the next year and develop its Grants+ offer, drawing upon these findings to ensure we can provide appropriate and valued support to grantees, share learnings and advocate for future funding.

Having access to this fund has provided reassurance and stability to grantees during this time, allowing them to focus on key matters – such as offering immediate support to meet young people’s needs – while giving scope to plan longer term about the future of their organisation.

Grantees contrasted the results of this type of funding against shorter-term and more ‘targeted’ funds that they felt could draw resource away from things that were essential in service, such as overhead costs, staff time or training and development opportunities.

This remains an important part of this type of funding and we continue to consider the benefits of this against more restricted funding streams to understand our role as a valued funder to the youth sector. 

Over the next year, we will continue to work with grantees to understand their position against a challenging financial backdrop and to advocate for further funding. We know there is still more to be done but we approach this with a renewed sense of optimism and vigour.

Over the next two years, UK Youth will continue to apply IVAR‘s grantmaker principles to ensure the cost-of-living grantees get the support needed, while highlighting the power of this type of funding in unlocking youth work for all young people.

UK Youth is a leading charity with a vision that all young people are equipped to thrive and empowered to contribute at every stage of their lives. With an open network of more than 8,000 youth organisations and nation partners; UK Youth reaches more than four million young people across the UK and is focused on unlocking youth work as the catalyst of change that is needed now more than ever. To find out more, visit ukyouth.org 

UK Youth is involved in a range of programmes designed to help young people thrive, such as outdoor learning, physical literacy, social action and employability, including Hatch, a youth employability programme run in partnership with KFC. For more on UK Youth’s programmes, see ukyouth.org/what-we-do/programmes