BGF Foundation Partnership Grants

Overview

The BGF Foundation supports growing charities that have plans to scale their impact. They focus on ambitious charities working with young people in the areas of:

• education
• employment
• enterprise
• mental health
• physical wellbeing

Young people are defined by those aged between 7 and 30. They will prioritise charities that can demonstrate growth in recent years, such as improvements in income, reach, evidence base or effectiveness of their work.

Grant awards

They provide core funding to charities and pro bono support from their staff and wider networks.

Grants will be £100k to be spread over two years.

They expect to make 4-5 grants in this round.

They are looking to support youth charities that will benefit from pro bono support and volunteering from BGF staff based throughout the country.

Pro bono and volunteering support

One of the priorities of the Foundation is to identify and support charities that can benefit from pro bono support from BGF staff and their wider network. BGF has 200 staff in 14 offices throughout the UK.

They have provided their charity partners a range of support.

They are keen to expand their offerings and work with suitable charities to explore where they can add the most value.

Support provided to date has included:

• One-off expert sessions on specialist areas
  • Cybersecurity
  • Cashflow management
  • Starter guide to investing for young people
• Longer-term consultancy support
  • CRM and business systems selection
  • Strategy planning
  • Financial forecasting
  • B2b marketing

They are keen to provide opportunities for BGF staff to use volunteering days where it is beneficial to their charity partners. These are full-day or half-day opportunities, often with teams working together.

These have included:

• Mock interviews for job seekers
• Serving on “Dragons’ Den” panels for young entrepreneurs
• Providing financial literacy advice for school children
• Sector specific workshops providing career advice to graduates

This is not a complete list, and they want to hear from charities that have a range of support needs, not just those listed above.

Please take a look at recent articles on their website to learn more about the kind of support that BGF can provide:

• BGF Foundation supports charity partnership with staff volunteering
• BGF's team provide expert support to charity Oxfordshire Youth

Grant criteria

To apply, applicants need to be:

• A registered charity in the UK
• Have been operating for at least three years
• Have an income between £1m-£3m in your latest published annual accounts
• All of your organisation’s work is with young people in one or more of their five focus areas of: enterprise, education, employment, mental health and physical wellbeing.