Grant funding criteria

Ulster Wildlife Trust was commissioned by the Education Authority and developed the Environment and Sustainability Curriculum- Sustainable Youth.

They’ll help promote this funding opportunity to youth organisations across Northern Ireland and provide support to applying organisations. They’ll also provide some additional guidance to Energy Saving Trust Foundation to aid the assessment process.

Once organisations have been awarded funding, Ulster Wildlife will provide a one-day training to youth workers/staff, enabling organisations to deliver the curriculum confidently.

Yes, for this round of funding we want to support organisations to be able to deliver the curriculum with the young people they work with.

Please note this is a flexible framework that allows you to adapt delivery based on the needs of the young people you’re working with. You’ll be asked at full application stage about your delivery plans.

Organisations must also attend the one-day training

The following costs are eligible:

• running costs to deliver the Environment and Sustainability Curriculum
• core organisation costs
• staff costs
• equipment necessary to deliver the work you’re requesting support for
• training costs for staff, volunteers and children and young people
• venue hire
• travel costs
• other costs associated with removing barriers to access for young people
• volunteer expenses
• budget for young people-led project development
• small scale capital costs

This isn’t an exhaustive list of costs that are eligible for funding. If you’re not sure if your application will be covered, please contact Lindsay Marsden, Head of Foundation.

This is funding that supports the core organisational and administrative costs of your organisation. These costs are outside any specific service delivery and could include (but not limited to):

• Staff salaries and training
• Day to day running costs and operations including rent and energy bills.
• Governance and audit
• Monitoring and evaluation
• Marketing and communications
• IT

We recognise how valuable core organisational funding is and encourage all applications to factor these costs into your budget.

We won’t consider applications supporting:

• Activity outside the perimeters of the Environment and Sustainability Curriculum.
• Activity with children and young people not experiencing inequality.
• Activity that benefits children and young people outside of Northern Ireland.
• Activity that isn’t led by the views and needs of children and young people.
• Grants to individuals.
• Grants for large scale capital funding, including building and renovations work.
• Work that takes place or is delivered by fee-paying schools.
• Work that is primarily the responsibility of statutory authorities.
• Promotion of religion, ideology or places of worship.
• Work that has already taken place.

If you’re unclear whether your application would be eligible, please contact Lindsay Marsden, Head of Foundation before completing an EOI.

Yes, if you’re already delivering Sustainable Youth we can fund ongoing work. Applicants can also submit new projects that use Sustainable Youth for consideration.

In this round of grant funding, we’re only accepting applications from organisations in Northern Ireland.

For this funding round, grants are restricted to organisations based and operating in Northern Ireland.

We had previously identified Northern Ireland as a location for funding based on high levels of need. We looked at data including the level of deprivation and presence of existing charity funding.

Despite this focus in our previous round, we didn’t get the volume/quality of applications from Northern Ireland organisations we were expecting. With this in mind, the Trustees decided to do a specific funding round.

We’re defining children and young people as anyone aged up to 25 years old.

We’re keeping an open view on the definition of inequality and will work with applicants to better understand the children and young people they work with.

All applicants are asked to clearly define the inequality the children and young people they support are facing. Inequality could include, but is not limited to, children and young people:

• experiencing poverty of any form
• living in a disadvantaged area
• with low educational attainment
• on free school meals
• who are disabled and/or have specific/additional needs
• from racially minoritised communities
• from the LGBTQIA+ community
• experiencing poor mental health
• experiencing loneliness
• experiencing homelessness or unstable housing situations
• who are care experienced
• who are young carers
• experiencing transport poverty
• experiencing digital poverty
• from refugee or migrant communities

No. Each organisation is limited to one application per funding round.

Yes, we encourage partnership applications from organisations with complementary skill sets. You can apply to deliver work as a partnership with two or more partners.

But the application needs to come from one lead partner who’ll manage the funding and have the contractual relationship with the Energy Saving Trust Foundation. 

We’ll develop reporting requirements with each grant partner to make sure a proportional and youth-led process that lets young people tell their own stories. Wherever possible we aim to make use of any existing reporting already being produced by grant partners for other donors.

Updates will be required on a six-monthly basis and annual reports will be required to release grant payment instalments. 

We accept applications for co-funding or contributions to a project with multiple funders. Please indicate this on the full application form.

We expect you to have a safeguarding policy and robust safeguarding practices in place. You’ll be asked for more information about your approach to safeguarding in the full application, and this might include a conversation with your designated safeguarding officer.

Yes, you can preview the full application questions. Please don’t submit this sample form. If you’re invited to submit a full application, we’ll send you a link to the online application form.

Grant applications are reviewed by the Head of Foundation and a second reviewer. Final decisions are made by the Foundation board of trustees. 

Your EOI application will be assessed considering the following information:

• You meet the eligibility criteria.
• Location of delivery. Across our portfolio we would like to ensure we are funding across different geographical areas of need.
• Your experience of working with young people experiencing inequality.
• Your ability to deliver a high-quality Sustainable Youth programme for young people.
• The inequality affecting the young people’s ability to take action on the climate emergency.

At full application stage we will also consider:

• Your approach to safeguarding and keeping young people safe.
• Your approach to learning and demonstrating impact.
• That your project plan and budget allows you to deliver a quality programme.
• Your approach and delivery model for delivering the Sustainable Youth Framework.

Lindsay Marsden, Head of Foundation