Resilience Fund
The Resilience Fund is now closed to applications.
We are currently in the process of assessing Stage 1 applications submitted between 8 January – 2 February 2024. We are aiming to notify all organisations of their application outcome by the end of February.
Aims of the Fund
The Resilience Fund forms part of our 2030 Strategy and represents a £900,000 investment in strengthening the voluntary sector. It aims to support small-to-medium sized organisations to invest in organisational development and build resilience for the future.
Fund Overview
The third year of the Resilience Fund was open to first stage applications between 8 January 2024 – 2 February 2024.
We are seeking to partner with organisations working with young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, and who face multiple layers of discrimination and inequality.
We will prioritise funding for organisations working with young people from the LGBTQ+ community and those applying a multi-agency approach to tackling youth homelessness.
Up to six successful organisations will receive up to £60,000 over two years to build organisational resilience.
Funding will run alongside a bespoke learning and evaluation programme, focused on highlighting best practice and supporting peer learning. Successful applicants will be able to access additional resources from the Berkeley Foundation and, where there is alignment of skills and needs, pro bono support from the wider Berkeley Group.
Further details are available in our Funding Guidelines.
Our Building Blocks to Resilience
Through the Resilience Fund, we want to support voluntary sector organisations to improve their ability to plan for, cope with, and respond to change – whether through improved governance and people power, better financial planning or stronger systems and strategies. We want to ensure that they will be around to support young people and their communities for many years to come.
There is no one single success formula for organisational resilience but considerable work has been done across the sector to identify the key building blocks. We are supporting projects that meet one or more of these objectives.
A clear mission, operationalised through strong strategic planning
Financial sustainability
Effective leadership
Operations that are fit for purpose
People and culture that meet your needs
Adding Value Through Learning
We are committed to learning about our work and sharing our learning across the public, private and voluntary sectors. We are working with Social Innovation Exchange to deliver a learning and evaluation programme alongside our funding. The programme focuses on highlighting best practice and supports peer learning.
We hope that learnings from the Resilience Fund, as well as from other similar initiatives across the sector, will support other funders to consider funding in this way.
We have recently published an article about our work on resilience in Alliance Magazine. You can read more about our learning to date here.
Our Partners
In its first two years, the Resilience Fund has supported 20 organisations working to help young people to overcome barriers to work and kick-start their careers, and to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people from Black and Minoritised Communities.
We are currently working with the following organisations over two years to help build their organisational resilience:
Our Impact
"We are delighted to be working in partnership with the Berkeley Foundation at this stage in BelEve's journey. We value partners who support us in continuing to provide new experiences and opportunities for girls and young women to improve their life chances and career prospects. The fund will contribute to BelEve becoming a sustainable charity delivering greater impact and transformation in girls and young women's lives."
Marsha Powell, Director, BelEve
"The support of the Berkeley Foundation has allowed us to fund our Youth Coordinator. This newly created role will play an essential part in strengthening our resilience and ensure we can respond to the increasing demands of our young people with skills, time and support. Makeda will help us improve how we recruit, support, track and evaluate the progress of our Young Shoots as they develop their knowledge and experience on our Young Shoots and Short Sharp Shot training programmes."
Natalie Wade, Founder & CEO, Small Green Shoots