The Youth and Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) is a powerful active citizenship programme empowering young people to make a difference in their communities.
YPI engages a full year group of students, developing skills and confidence through a contextualised learning experience. Through teamwork, research, and competition, young people advocate for social issues in a bid to secure a £3000 grant for their chosen charity.
Since 2008, more than £9.3m has been granted to charities in Scotland, realising direct positive impact for social issues championed by young people through YPI.
Getting Involved
You may have been approached by a group of students taking part in YPI and you are now looking for more information. Firstly, thank you for considering to support the programme and it’s future change makers.
We want to ensure that you have all the information you need to support young people as they engage with your charity through YPI, but also to look at how best to harness ongoing relationships with schools and encourage youth voice and volunteering within your organisation.
Through meaningful engagement and your sharing of facts, figures and human-interest stories, you will empower students to be able to tell your story and bring to life the social issues you are addressing. This is so powerful, not only as a unique form of devolved, locally driven grant making, but also for shaping a more empathetic and confident generation of young people that can continue to support your cause.
Each participating school delivers YPI to an entire year group, between S1 and S6.
We ask young people to choose an issue they feel passionate about and then find a charity addressing that issue in their local community.
The following sections outline what you can expect, including your role in the process. We also hold regular online webinars for charities for further information.
Every school has their own delivery model and timeline, so you could be contacted at any time in the school year and from more than one school.
Please be aware that there is a diverse range of ability and confidence levels amongst the young people who will get in touch. For some, making contact with an unknown adult can be difficult. There may be lived experience of an issue, or this might be pupils learning about the issue for the first time.
As the programme is student led, the preference is that students contact the charity, not the other way around. However, some schools do host a charity fair, which allows you to speak to pupils directly before they select a charity to support. Schools may contact you to ask you to support their charity fair.
Through phone or video calls, emails, visiting the school or students visiting the charities premises, students will be able to find out about the work you do. Learning about the services you provide and what impact winning £3000 could have as well as useful facts and figures will aid their understanding,
However, providing welcoming opportunities for students to use their time and talents to help you, can also deepen their understanding, passion and connection to the social issue and you organisation.
Students will develop a creative and convincing presentation in a bid to secure the funding. Essentially, this is an opportunity for students to share your story and raise awareness of the charity. The more engaging and persuasive, the greater chance of winning, therefore any support you can provide will be invaluable to your team.
They must also clearly demonstrate an understanding of how the social issue affects local people as well as the potential impact that £3000 could have. We call this the Business Case and the more specific and measurable they are, again, the greater their chance of winning.
Some schools hold class finals to shortlist teams to reach the Final Showcase. Those teams present to a larger audience as well as a panel of independent judges who choose the winner based on the judging criteria.
If your team reaches the Final Showcase, you may be invited to attend the event. This is a lovely opportunity to connect with other charities as well as continue to support your team of young people who are championing the charity.
We hope that students will be in touch to share with you the outcome of the project.
If you are successful, The Wood Foundation will process the grant after the Final Showcase. This will come from the school and / or directly from The Wood Foundation.
Along with our thanks, we kindly ask winning charities to complete a survey and if possible, we encourage charities to share with us more about the subsequent positive impact of their grant.
Winning charities are often asked along to the launch of the programme for the next years cohort to share the impact of the grant.
For further information, please read our Frequently Asked Questions.
Working with likeminded partners supports the sustainability of YPI as we grow the opportunity throughout Scotland.
