A £2m round of grant funding has opened to charities led by Black and racially minoritised communities, as part of a £10m investment in making funding streams accessible to these communities.
The children and youth funding round, launched by the grant-maker The Phoenix Way in partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund, is offering project funding of up to £50,000 per organisation.
The grant will support projects run by not-for-profit groups, organisations or charities that are led by representatives of Black and racially minoritised communities and work with communities that are mostly aged 18 or under and are at high risk of becoming involved in violence.
Applicants must be located in England or Wales, and have an annual operating budget of up to £150,000 a year. Interested charities can apply online at The Global Fund for Children’s website.
The grant comes as part of YEF’s £10m investment in The Phoenix Way. It follows an emergency £20,000 round of unrestricted funding that was distributed to Black and racial minority-led charities working with young people in May this year, to help them combat the cost-of-living crisis.
The Phoenix Way project, led by The Ubele Initiative and supported by the Global Fund for Children, is a grant-making initiative launched in 2020 in response to structural inequalities facing Black and racially minoritised communities when accessing grant funding in the UK.
Yvonne Field, chief executive and founder of The Ubele Initiative and convening partner of The Phoenix Way, said: “I am pleased that we are using a participatory approach [to funding] as our communities are often excluded from grant-making and are unable to influence the design or decision-making processes.
“The significant response that we have received to these targeted funding rounds demonstrates that Black and racially minoritised communities are not actually hard to reach at all. We have to speak to these communities directly and involve them in decision-making.”
Jon Yates, executive director at the Youth Endowment Fund, said that its investment was part of its “commitment to ensure our funding is accessible to organisations led by – and working for – people from Black, Asian and other minority backgrounds”.
“With this latest funding round, we aim to extend our support to even more grassroots groups working to help children live a life free from violence.”