#what’s working 2025: Strength in Data
2025 Funding Opportunity
Strength in Data
In 2025 the Prudence Trust is delighted to offer another funding opportunity for charities to bolster their ability to gather and make use of data from their work. We believe well-evidenced practice is vital to advancing young people’s mental health and we believe this sector can have even more impact when they have the skills and tools to make the most of what they know.
We know that youth mental health charities are doing amazing work, and have access to a wealth of information to help themselves and fellow charities improve and grow services. We know they are passionate about offering the best possible support, but don’t always have the capacity or essential infrastructure needed to harness that information. We want to help.
Where our 2024 ‘What’s Working for Young People’s Mental Health?’ opportunity supported discrete pieces of evaluation work, this opportunity is about increasing organisations’ capacity to do good monitoring and analysis that could make evaluation work more valuable.
This opportunity is open in the first stage to those who meet all the criteria. Grants will be awarded in June 2025.
KEY INFORMATION
Application deadline
First stage: Monday 3 March 4pm
Invitations to second stage offered by end of March
Purpose of funding
Building M&E capacity in youth mental health charities
Eligible organisations
UK registered charities or CICs
With an annual income above £250,000, and two years of published accounts
Who work exclusively with young people
Who deliver direct mental health support
Who already collect mental health or wellbeing data
Example eligible costs
Salaries, software, consultancy fees, training.
Value and term of grants
Total grants budget: £1 million
Grant size: 5-6 grants, of different sizes.
Grant term: Three years
Information webinars
Thurs 13 February 10am [sign up]
Thurs 20 February 3pm [sign up]
Who can apply
This opportunity is for organisations who support young people who need support with their mental health. We will only consider applications from organisations who meet these four criteria:
- Organisation: UK registered charities or CICs with an annual income of £250,000 or over, and two years of published accounts.
- Beneficiaries: The charity or CIC must work exclusively with young people aged 10-30 (but need not cover the entire age range).
- Services delivered: The charity or CIC must deliver direct mental health support. For this opportunity we will only consider talk therapy or activities socially prescribed for young people experiencing anxiety or depression, as mental health support.
- Data collection: The charity or CIC already routinely collects data on mental health or wellbeing, and can demonstrate this.
We will not consider applications from unregistered charities, those running for less than two years, those whose work is not exclusively with young people (though we will consider those also supporting parents), those who are not delivering direct mental health support, or who are not already collecting mental health data from their work.
We will be hosting two information webinars in February to answer further questions about the opportunity. See links to sign up in the blue box on the right of the page.
What you can apply for
This funding opportunity recognises what the sector has told us it needs now – support harnessing their data. These grants should help organisations bolster their capacity to do quality data collection and to make use of that data to periodically review services. Our wish is that organisations are consistently strong in their ongoing monitoring and evaluation practice and less reliant on temporary external support.
What we will offer funding for
We rely on you, the experts, to tell us what you need to build this capacity. Some examples of what our funding could cover include:
- Upskilling of staff responsible for monitoring and evaluation
- Salaries for dedicated data or M&E roles
- Software or hardware needed to improve data infrastructure, e.g. databases
- Costs to work with an external evaluator or academic on specific programmes.
- External data management expertise, evaluation expertise
This opportunity won’t award funds for:
- The costs of service delivery
- Retrospective funding (we can only fund costs incurred after June 2025)
Budget and grant amounts
Our total grants budget for this opportunity is £1m. We expect to award 5-6 grants, of various sizes, from this total. You should request an appropriate grant for the work you want to do. Those invited to second stage will be expected to carry out a review of their data needs and make a case for what they would like the grant to support.
- We are less likely to consider requests over £300k. If you have a strong proposal for more than this, please contact us before applying.
- We won’t consider requests for less than £10,000. Other funders may be more suitable for these requests.
Key dates
| Stage one (open to all) | |
| Wed 29 January | First stage applications open |
| Thur 13 Feb at 10am Thur 20 Feb at 3pm | Optional information webinars [sign up] [sign up] |
| Mon 3 March 4pm | First stage application deadline |
| Stage two (by invitation) | |
| Late March | A long list will be invited to apply for the second stage |
| Tue 6 May 4pm | Second stage application deadline |
| Late May | Online assessment calls |
| Mid June 2025 | Grants awarded |
How to apply
To apply to stage one please submit the expression of interest form before 4pm on 3 March. A Word document template of the form is available here to prepare your answers, but the form must be submitted through our online form. Please complete our short eligibility quiz to access the online form.
[Complete this eligibility quiz to submit your Expression of Interest]
[Expression of Interest form – Word template]
You will know if you are invited to submit a full second stage application by the end of March 2025.
We will let second stage applicants know whether their application has been successful in mid June 2025
How grant decisions are made
We will only consider applications that meet the three application criteria above. After that, we will prioritise applications that can demonstrate these strengths:
- It’s clear what the proposed grant would support, why it would be useful and what difference it would make.
- A culture of curiosity. Organisations that are interested not just in collecting data but in using it to find out how they can improve – and can show they have done so before. Organisations open to surprising findings.
- How much this grant would change the ongoing ability of the organisation to manage and make use of data better.
- The organisation has a clear understand of the internal processes needed to turn learning into practical changes.
- The organisation is well networked and has a culture of sharing best practice with others locally or in their sector.
Our aims for this programme are that at the end of the grant period:
- Funded organisations are more confident they they are collecting the right data to make informed decisions, for instance about (but not limited to) programme delivery, staff resourcing, cost effectiveness of programmes and making a case for support for fundraising, and to communicate their work externally.
- Funded organisations are more confident their programmes are being delivered well and being effective.
- Funded organisations have improved their capabilities around making the best use of data available to them. This could be measured through an organisational baseline and grant end data skills and capacity assessment as part of this grant programme.
- Funded organisations are better positioned to carry out periodic or ongoing evaluation of their services based on their own good quality data.
- Funded organisations have more reliable information about their work and its effectiveness, making them more credible to other charities, funders and policy makers.
Final decisions are made by the board of trustees.
what to expect if you are successful
You will need to agree to our grant terms and conditions and we will expect you to keep us updated via written reports every six months and ad hoc calls.
We expect grant holders to be part of a cohort of other ‘What’s Working?’ organisations and be available to share what they’re learning with other at Prudence Trust events.
We want to support charities doing great work to explore why it works, make it better or, even, stop doing what’s not working. Above all, we want them to use this learning to advance the understanding of what is working in children and young people’s mental health.
