Ufi: VocTech Challenge Grant Fund
Overview
Purpose of the fund
This grant fund is part of their VocTech Challenge: Skills for an Economy in Transition programme.
Informed by the learnings from their place-based collaborations they are looking for bold, tech-led approaches to tackle one of three specific challenges:
- Employer integration:
- How can technology be used to integrate and reflect employers’ changing needs so that the skills of the available workforce better reflect the needs of local employers?
- Pathways into and within work:
- How can technology be used to increase the visibility, accessibility and uptake of pathways from learning into work, or from one type of work into another, particularly in regional growth sectors?
- Vocational language barriers:
- How can technology be used to support adults with in-demand vocational skills, but who don’t speak English as their first language, gain the industry-specific English required by employers?
The VocTech Challenge Impact Network + Grant Fund represents a new approach to Ufi grant funding.
Successful grant fund applicants will each receive between £200k and £250k to refine and deploy their ideas.
They will also join a network of organisations working alongside each other as part of an active, expert-led programme designed to create connections, share knowledge, test assumptions and accelerate adoption and deployment.
Purpose of the grant fund
The overall purpose is to grant fund a cohort of projects that use technology to tackle the three challenges they have identified. They want to be able to demonstrate how technology can catalyse larger scale sustainable change in adult skills provision so that the UK has the skills it needs.
This fund is not about the potential for impact. It is about changing how things are done to have a direct and tangible impact on learners during the period of funding, in a way that sustains when the funding has ended.
They know that solving these challenges will not be easy. That is why successful applicants will join their VocTech Challenge Impact Network, bringing together a network of stakeholders already actively tackling barriers to adult learning as part of the ongoing VocTech Challenge programme.
What they are looking for
They are looking for bold ideas supported by imaginative and practical plans with the potential to radically increase adult participation in learning and training during the funding period, and to continue long after it ends.
Successful applications will focus on ideas which unlock potential in the communities, sectors, skill levels and places currently underserved by mainstream provision.
They understand that these challenges do not exist in isolation - that is partly why they are so complex. Successful applicants will be expected to explore and consider connected issues as part of their work together; however they must concentrate on one challenge question for the application.
This grant call is not about tech solutions and products in isolation.
- They are looking for ideas that are flexible, dynamic, adaptable and linked - not one solution for one problem for one employer.
- They are interested in ideas that look beyond a single product, supplier, organisation or service, and which create connections between different organisations and processes to demonstrate how people and structures could work together to address the challenges we have identified.
- They are looking for ideas that can demonstrate a better way of tackling the challenges they have set out. Showing how, alongside people and processes, tech can improve how things are done and deliver better outcomes.
- Ideas could be about how tech could improve and formalise ‘hacks’ or work arounds to an existing system or business process, or the development of completely new ways of working.
- They are looking for ideas that support learners into real work and job opportunities, strengthening the link between skills training, local employment needs and actual jobs. Applications that talk about ‘pathways’ into work therefore must have real employers engaged locally.
- They won’t support projects that develop skills without a local need.
- They are looking for applications with match funding to ensure the risk and commitment is shared between Ufi and the project.
- There is no set percentage of match funding and it can be cash or in kind. Tell them on your application what resources you will bring and what you need from them.
Whatever the idea, it must not add complexity or duplication into the existing skills system. As found in their Green and White papers, complexity, fragmentation and too many ‘systems inside a system’ are major barriers to change.
Who can apply?
This is an open grant call, so they are open to applications from all types of organisations, in line with their normal guidance.
They are looking for applications from organisations who want to be part of their VocTech Challenge Impact Network, and active movement for change that brings together a network of stakeholders already actively tackling barriers to adult learning as part of our ongoing VocTech Challenge programme.
Given the aims of this grant call they think it will be best suited to:
- Collaborative groups of organisations and employers (with a lead applicant) where at least one partner has a strong track-record in working with the target community of learners, at least one has a strong development and learning design background, and an employer or employer group partner is involved.
- Organisations/groups who are in touch with or delivering in the part of the skills system which they wish to change.
- Organisations with a strong track-record in working with a community of learners, and a route to engaging employers/employer groups.
- Organisations with a shared passion for Ufi’s mission.
How much funding is available?
Successful grant fund applicants will each receive between £200k and £250k to refine and deploy their ideas.
They will also join a network of organisations working alongside each other as part of an active, expert-led programme designed to create connections, share knowledge, test assumptions and accelerate adoption and deployment.