Five or six grants of between £10,000 and £300,000 are available to UK registered charities and Community Interest Companies to support the collection and use of data in the youth mental health sector.
Mental health charity the Prudence Trust have launched another open funding opportunity this week. This funding is to support data collection and use in the youth mental health sector.
The Trust’s Strength in Data grant programme offers opportunities for charities and Community Interest Companies across the UK to bolster their ability to gather and make use of data from their work. The Trust believes that well-evidenced practice is vital to advancing young people’s mental health and asserts the sector can have more impact when they have the skills and tools to make the most of what they know.
Where the Trust’s 2024 grant programme ‘What’s Working for Young People’s Mental Health?’ supported discrete pieces of evaluation work, this opportunity is about increasing organisations’ capacity to carry out good monitoring and analysis that could make evaluation work more valuable.
The Strength in Data programme is open to UK registered charities or Community Interest Companies with an annual income of at least £250,000. Eligible organisations will offer at least one direct mental health intervention and already collect data on mental health or wellbeing.
The total grants budget for this opportunity is £1 million. The Trust expects to award 5-6 grants. Applicants are asked to request an appropriate grant for the work they want to do. Those invited to second stage will be expected to carry out a review of their data needs and make a case for what they would like the grant to support.
Please note that applications for less than £10,000 will not be considered, while grants for £300,000 or more are unlikely (applicants with a strong case for requesting more than £300,000 should contact the Trust before applying).
Some examples of what our funding could cover include (this is not an exclusive list):
- Costs to work with an external evaluator or academic on specific programmes.
- External data management expertise, evaluation expertise.
- Salaries for dedicated data or Monitoring & Evaluation roles.
- Software or hardware needed to improve data infrastructure (for example, databases), and/or
- Upskilling of staff responsible for monitoring and evaluation
Applicants must:
- Work exclusively with young people aged 10-30 (but need not cover the entire age range).
- Deliver direct mental health support. For this opportunity, only talk therapy or activities socially prescribed for young people experiencing anxiety or depression as mental health support will be considered, and
- Already routinely be collecting data on mental health or wellbeing, and can demonstrate this.
In this first stage the Trust is seeking Expressions of Interests through its online form. The deadline for submitting an Expression of Interest is 4pm on Monday 3 March 2025.
For charities and Community Interest Companies progressing to the Stage 2 Full Application, the deadline for applications is 4pm on Tuesday 6 May 2025, with grants expected to be awarded in June 2025.
The Trust has scheduled two online Information Sessions for potential applicants on Zoom. The dates are:
Thursday 13 February at 10am. Registration can be made at this link.
Thursday 20 February at 10am. Registration can be made at this link.
Further information, guidance and access to the Expression of Interest form is available on the Trust’s website.