THE HENRY SMITH FOUNDATION
Details of the Foundation’s (1) Shout! Fund; (2) Home-based Early Years Support grants, and (3) Domestic Abuse Fund, all of which have forthcoming application deadlines and offer multi-year funding to eligible UK organisations.
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o Application deadlines:
(1) The Shout! Fund – WEDNESDAY 20th AUGUST 2025;
(2) Together We Begin: Investing in Home-Based Early Years Support – THURSDAY 28th AUGUST 2025 for Expressions of Interest);
(3) The Domestic Abuse Fund – WEDNESDAY 10th SEPTEMBER 2025 at 5pm for Expressions of Interest.
o Funder: The Henry Smith Charity (founded 1628. Charity number 230102. Total charitable expenditure during the year ending 31 December 2023: £65,535,000 (2022: £80,703,000; 2021: £53,197,000)).
o Who can apply: please check the eligibility criteria for each funding programme for details about who can apply. All programmes are available across the UK.
o Key words: Young People Aged 14-25, Advocacy, Care-Experienced Young People, LGBT+ Young People, Young People with Learning Disabilities, Young People with Neurodivergences, Early Years’ Parenting Support, Home-based Children’s Development, Specialist Domestic Abuse Services, United Kingdom.
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The Henry Smith Foundation funds organisations supporting people through three key life transitions:
1. Getting started – supporting families to give their young children a strong start.
2. Building independence – helping young people move into adulthood with confidence, skills and hope, and
3. Safer futures – supporting people to rebuild their lives after abuse, displacement or prison.
Within each funding priority, the Foundation runs grant programmes with clear aims and criteria. Its funding is designed to be flexible to support both immediate needs and long-term change. This means the Foundation will fund organisations delivering frontline support and those working to improve the systems that shape people’s lives.
The Foundation currently has several new grant programmes that align with its recently published 2025-2030 Strategy. If you click on the heading of each programme below, it should take you to the detailed information about the programme on the Foundation’s website.
1. THE SHOUT! FUND (application deadline: Wednesday 20th August 2025) – the Shout! Fund is aimed at making sure young people aged 14-15 are heard, especially when the world does not listen.
The Foundation wants to support non-statutory advocacy services that help young people speak up, make informed choices, and secure their rights. Especially in systems where they are often excluded, misunderstood, or marginalised.
The Shout! Fund has a focus on organisations working with care-experienced young people, LGBT+ young people, and young people with learning disabilities and/or neurodivergences.
Services could include casework, one-to-one, group or peer advocacy as long as it meets our key features of advocacy outlined in our guidelines.
The Foundation recognises that organisations may not always label their work as ‘Advocacy’ but may still be doing work that reflects our key features of advocacy. If your service provides the support outlined in our funding guidelines, the Foundation encourages an application, regardless of how you label it.
Grants of up to £240,000 over 4 years (i.e. £60,000 per year) are available.
2. TOGETHER WE BEGIN: INVESTING IN HOME-BASED EARLY YEARS SUPPORT (application deadline: Thursday 28th August 2025 for Expressions of Interest) – the Foundation is looking to fund organisations that provide early years parenting support and promote children’s development through sustained, face-to-face work in the home.
The key aims of the fund are to strengthen parenting skills to improve children’s outcomes, build confidence and reduce stress in the home, and connect families to their local community.
The Foundation is committed to funding work that is rooted in communities, is strengths-based, responsive to need, inclusive and accessible and focused on meaningful, lasting change.
The Together We Begin fund is part of the Foundation’s Getting Started funding priority, which supports families to give young children the best possible start in life.
Grants of up to £150,000 over 3 years (£40-50k per year). It’s anticipated that around 40 grants will be awarded.
3. THE DOMESTIC ABUSE FUND (application deadline: Wednesday 10th September 2025 at 5pm for Expressions of Interest) – this programme will provide grants to ‘led by and for’ organisations delivering
The Foundation is looking to fund groups that are deeply rooted in their communities and offer person-centred, holistic support that is tailored around the needs of people from marginalised and minoritised communities who’
Grants are intended to enable organisation to continue to contribute to meaningful, lasting change for survivors of domestic abuse.
All successful applicants will receive a grant of £250,000 over five years (£50,000 per year). It is anticipated that 20 grants will be made.
Further information, guidance, eligibility checklists and launch videos for each fund are available on the Foundation’s website.
Contact details for the Foundation are:
The Henry Smith Foundation
Caledonia House
3rd Floor
223 Pentonville Road
London
N1 9NG
Tel: 020 7264 4970
Applicants can request a call back from the Foundation by completing the ‘Request a Call Back’ form on the Foundation’s website.