The Prudence Trust’s programme of grant-making is designed achieve one or more of the following:

o The advancement of mental health especially in the UK.
o The advancement of the arts especially in the UK.
o The relief of those in need because of youth, age, financial hardship or other disadvantage, and
o Any other general purpose that the Trustee Directors think fit

The Trust’s “What’s Working for Young People’s Mental Health” programme, which has a budget of £1 million, is its second grant programme. Its aim is to enable charities and Community Interest Companies across the UK evaluate the impact of their work in order that they can identify ways in which they can improve and embed robust evaluation processes in their services.

The Trust expects to award up to 8 grants of between £10,000 and £200,000 each year for a period of up to 2 years. Awards of over £120,000 are less likely and only expected to be granted for exceptional proposals,

The Trust has provided the following examples of how a grant could be used:

o Consultancy support for work such as strategy review, theory of change, creation of an evaluation and change plan.
o Costs to work with an external evaluator or academic on specific programmes, and
o Upskilling of staff responsible for monitoring and evaluation.

Priority will be given to groups that:

o Display a culture of curiosity and are interested in collecting data and using it to find out how they can improve. 
o Have a proposal that is useful and actionable, with a clear output at the end of the grant period.
o Have a senior leadership team that is committed to learning from the evaluation, and
o Proposals that clearly demonstrate strategic value (for example,  designing more effective programmes, demonstrating impact for commissioning or aligning services more closely with young people's needs). 

Funding is not available for:

o Costs directly associated with service delivery.
o Evaluating completely new services.
o Groups whose work is not primarily focussed on young people aged 11-25..
o Retrospective costs (i.e. costs that have already been incurred).
o Unregistered charities, or
o Work that does not have a clear mental health outcome. 

The Trust has scheduled two Information Webinars on Zoom to explain the programme in more detail.

1. Thursday 8th February 2024 at 2pm. Registration can be made at this LINK.
2. Monday 12th February at midday (12 noon). Registration can be made at this LINK.

The grant programme has a 2-stage application process:

o Stage 1: submission of an online Expression of Interest form by 4pm on Friday 8th March 2024.
o Stage 2: the Trust will draw up a long list of applicants who will be invited to apply for the second stage. The deadline for full applications is Friday 3rd May 2024.

Online or in person assessment visits will be scheduled for May 2024 and grants awarded by the end of June 2024.

Further information, guidance and details about how to apply can be found on the Trust's website.