Resilience 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.

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.

Berkeley Foundation icon of chess piece

A clear mission, operationalised through strong strategic planning 

Berkeley Foundation icon of sustainability

Financial sustainability

Berkeley Foundation icon of leadership torch

Effective leadership

Berkeley Foundation icon of a gear

Operations that are fit for purpose 

Berkeley Foundation icon of people

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 over the next four years, 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. 

Our Partners

In 2021/22, we targeted organisations supporting young people to overcome barriers to work and kick-start their careers. We are 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 

The second year of the fund was aimed at supporting organisations working to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people from Black and Minoritised Communities. Applications closed on 31 October 2022 and our new partners were announced in 2023. 

Year 3 of the Resilience Fund will be launched in January 2024. Watch this space for further details.