What we fund through the Catalyst Awards

Catalyst Awards What we fund

We welcome applications for grants to support place-based interventions. By ‘place-based’, we mean interventions seeking to meet the unique needs of people within a specific geography.

Projects will work collaboratively with those who live and work in the communities they want to reach to understand their needs and strengths.

Skills and employment

Projects working in a specific place to address skills gaps, create jobs or address other factors that prevent the economic flourishing of particular communities.

Education and learning

Projects working in a specific place with learners of any age, both in and outside formal education, with a focus on the broader purpose of education as developing individuals' capability and agency, as well as strengthening communities.

Health and wellbeing  

Projects working to ensure the health and wellbeing of those working in a specific place to improve health outcomes.

Community participation and decision-making

Projects that are working to ensure that citizens in a particular place can connect, participate and collaborate to improve their communities and tackle key issues impacting them.

Applicants will need to demonstrate a need for their project and provide a vision for how they will positively impact project beneficiaries in these four areas.

New for 2023: Design for Life awards

As part of the our Design for Life strategy, we are launching two additional grants (one £10k scaling award and one £2k seed award) and a non-financial offer to enable grantees to have greater impact. These grants will support applicants working with regenerative practices and approaches.

To be elligible, your project will need to demonstrate:

  • Interconnected impacts: a holistic net-positive impact on social, natural, and human systems, and environmental sustainability.
  • Strengthening connection: enabling people to reconnect with their communities, places or the natural world in new ways to improve their resilience in the face of emerging challenges.
  • Power sharing: distributing power and resources internally as well as empowering the communities they are serving.

Like all other Catalyst fund applicants, all projects will need to be place-based and will need to select one of our focus areas, which will describe the broad aims of the project. See our application pack for more detail on the criteria and offer.

Catalyst FAQs

One-stop-shop for any questions, including about eligibility, the assessment process and more.

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Our impact

Read about past Catalyst Award projects to find out about the difference Catalyst funding made to their work.

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Contact the Catalyst team

Any questions? Call us on +44 (0)20 7451 6895