YouthBank: grants decided by young people, for young people.

How the YouthBank model works

A YouthBank puts the grant decision in the hands of young people. Each local YouthBank raises or receives money, then trains a panel of young grant-makers — typically aged 16–25 — to set local funding priorities, assess applications and award the funds. Adult staff support the process, but the decisions belong to the panel.

The model is deliberately small-scale and local. Grants are usually modest sums that make a real difference to a youth-led idea: a community garden, a sports session, a campaign, a workshop. What makes it distinctive is not the size of the grant but who decides — and what those decision-makers learn by deciding.

Serving on a panel builds practical capabilities: reading a budget, weighing evidence, negotiating priorities, defending a decision. YouthBank describes this as young people gaining skills and confidence through grantmaking itself — the process is the programme, not just the paperwork.

The panel journey: from applicant to grant-maker

What a young person actually does when they join a YouthBank panel — the process is the programme.

1. 1

   Join

   Local recruitment, usually ages 16–25. No grantmaking experience needed — curiosity and commitment are the entry ticket.

   Week 1
2. 2

   Train

   Induction on what a grant is, how to read a budget, what good applications look like, and how panels make fair decisions.

   Weeks 2–4
3. 3

   Set priorities

   The panel decides what its community needs most — the funding criteria are theirs, not handed down by adults.

   Month 2
4. 4

   Review applications

   Read real proposals, discuss them as a panel, weigh evidence against the criteria the panel set.

   Month 2–3
5. 5

   Decide & award

   The panel makes the calls and defends them. Adult staff support the process; the decisions belong to the young people.

   Month 3
6. 6

   Reflect & grow

   What was learned carries forward: budgeting, judgement, negotiation, accountability — capabilities resilience science links directly to youth thriving.

   Ongoing

The applicant journey: from idea to funded project

If you are a young person with an idea — or an adult supporting one — here is the shape of the road.

1. 1

   Find your local YouthBank

   YouthBanks are independent and local. YouthBank’s site lists current members and contacts — start there.

2. 2

   Check the criteria

   Each YouthBank sets its own eligibility, deadlines and grant sizes. Read your local panel’s priorities before applying.

3. 3

   Apply

   Applications are typically short and plain-language — designed to be answerable by a young person with an idea, not a professional fundraiser.

4. 4

   Panel review

   A panel of your peers reads and discusses your application against the criteria they set. You may be invited to say more.

5. 5

   Decision & grant

   If funded, the money goes to your project — a community garden, a sports session, a campaign, a workshop. Modest sums, real difference.

6. 6

   Deliver & report

   Run the project and tell the panel what happened. Reporting back to a peer panel is itself part of the capability-building loop.

Start a YouthBank where you live

There is no YouthBank everywhere yet — and the model is designed to be started, not just joined.

1. 1

   Ask the network

   YouthBank supports new YouthBanks with training, materials and links to existing members. Their site is the starting point for current guidance.

2. 2

   Find a host & seed funding

   New YouthBanks typically sit with a local community organisation and start with modest funds from local donors, councils or partners.

3. 3

   Recruit the first panel

   Bring together a diverse group of local young people — the panel is the YouthBank, not the paperwork around it.

4. 4

   Train, decide, award

   Run the same journey as any YouthBank: train the panel, let them set priorities, and put the first grants in their hands.

How to apply or get involved

YouthBanks are independent and local: each sets its own eligibility rules, deadlines, grant sizes and application process. If you are a young person with a project idea, or an adult supporting one, the starting point is YouthBank’s own site, which lists current member YouthBanks and their contact details.

If you want to help fund youth-led work, YouthBanks welcome local donors and partners — and if there is no YouthBank near you, the model is designed to be started: the network supports new YouthBanks with training and materials.

Where the YouthBank idea came from

Youth-led grantmaking did not appear overnight. It grew out of a long shift in youth work and philanthropy: from doing things for young people, to doing things with them, to handing them the purse.

The YouthBank model emerged from the youth participation movement, which argued that participation only becomes real when it includes genuine decision-making power — not just consultation. Early youth-led funds in the UK and elsewhere showed that when young people control money, the money reaches different ideas, and the decision-makers grow in the process.

Over time, local YouthBanks linked into a UK-wide network, sharing training materials, evaluation approaches and the core principle: the panel decides. Each YouthBank remains independent and community-based — the network spreads the model, but never the priorities, which stay local.

How a YouthBank builds agency

Agency is the felt sense that your actions matter — that you can influence what happens to you and around you. It is one of the most consistently identified protective factors in resilience research.

A YouthBank manufactures agency on both sides of the grant. For panel members, the experience is unambiguous: real money, real applications, real decisions with real consequences for their community. Nobody is pretending to consult them — the cheque book is theirs.

For successful applicants, the effect repeats: a young person who planned a project, won the funding and delivered it has direct evidence that their ideas can change their area. That evidence is exactly what agency is built from — ordinary magic, in the sense Ann Masten’s research describes: not rare gifts, but ordinary experiences of effectiveness, made available.

How a YouthBank builds competence

Competence in resilience research means real skills, really used — not certificates, but capabilities exercised where the outcome counts.

Panel service is dense with skill-building that would be hard to replicate in a classroom: reading a budget and spotting what it omits, weighing competing applications against stated priorities, disagreeing with a peer and defending the reasoning, writing a decision that will be read by adults and by unsuccessful applicants, and reporting publicly on what was funded and why.

Applicants build competence too: scoping a project, costing it realistically, planning delivery, and — whether funded or not — learning how a real funding process works from the inside. Several YouthBanks offer feedback to unsuccessful applicants, which turns a rejection into a skill-building round rather than a dead end.

How a YouthBank builds connection

Connection — belonging to people and community — is the third protective factor, and the one a YouthBank builds most quietly.

Panels work as a group over months: recruiting together, training together, arguing priorities together. Members leave with a network of peers they would not otherwise have met, and with working relationships with adult staff, local funders and community organisations.

The funded projects extend the same effect outward: a youth-led project is by definition a new thread in the community’s fabric — new activities, new meeting points, new reasons for young people to know their neighbours. Research on resilience consistently finds that it is relationships, not programmes alone, that carry the effect — and a YouthBank is, at bottom, a machine for making relationships.

What funded communities gain

The most visible output of a YouthBank is the stream of small, youth-led projects it funds in its area.

Because local panels set their own priorities, the projects funded tend to reflect what young people in that place actually want — which is not always what adults would have guessed. That is the practical value of youth-led decisions: better-targeted money, and projects with built-in demand because their designers are their audience.

Communities also gain something less tangible: visible proof that young people can be trusted with responsibility. Every well-run YouthBank panel is a standing counter-example to the assumption that youth involvement is token — and a training ground for the next generation of local trustees, committee members and volunteers.

What the young grant-makers gain

The panel members are the model’s second product — and by many accounts its most durable one.

Grant-making is an unusually honest teacher. A panel member must handle money that is not theirs, a process that must be fair, applicants who deserve a clear answer, and decisions that will be reviewed. Doing that well, with training and support, builds exactly the mix of practical skill and self-belief that resilience research associates with thriving.

It also builds a CV of real, verifiable experience: budget analysis, assessment against criteria, group decision-making, public reporting. Former panel members carry that into further study, work and volunteering — and many stay involved in community funding and governance long after their panel service ends.

The role of adult allies

Adults in a YouthBank have a specific job: hold the scaffolding, not the pen.

Adult staff and volunteers recruit and train panels, handle administration and money logistics, ensure safeguarding is in place, and support the process so the young people can decide well. What they do not do is decide — the moment adults quietly take over the funding choices, the model stops being a YouthBank and becomes a youth-flavoured committee.

The craft of adult allyship is stepping back at the right moments: enough support that the panel succeeds, enough distance that the success is genuinely theirs. Done well, it is one of the clearest working examples of what resilience research calls an “ordinary magic” relationship — an adult who is present, warm and does not take over.

Safeguarding, built in

Any model that puts young people in charge of money and public decisions needs safeguarding designed in from the start — and the YouthBank model does.

The standard architecture: adult oversight of all financial transactions (panels decide, adults move the money), recruitment and training that includes safeguarding basics, clear conflict-of-interest rules for panel members, and safe routes for raising concerns. Because each YouthBank is independent, the specifics vary locally — but the principle is constant: young people hold the decisions, adults hold the duty of care.

Proportionality matters too. Grants are modest, community-scale sums — real enough to matter, small enough that a mistake is a lesson rather than a catastrophe. The model is designed so that the worst case is a small grant that did not work, not a young person exposed to unmanaged risk.

How YouthBanks measure what they achieve

Youth-led funds face a measurement question that traditional funders do not: the value is on both sides of the grant, so both sides need counting.

On the project side, YouthBanks track the usual grantmaking outputs: applications received, awards made, projects delivered, and what the projects themselves report. On the panel side, the measures are about development — typically gathered through before-and-after self-assessment, panel member reflection, and tracking what members go on to do.

The honest caveat: small local funds rarely have evaluation budgets, so much of the evidence is self-reported and local. What is not in doubt is the design logic — the model deliberately engineers the three protective factors (agency, competence, connection) into the funding process itself, rather than hoping they occur as a side effect.

Why youth-led grantmaking matters

Decades of research on resilience in children point to the same protective factors: agency (a sense that your actions matter), competence (real skills, really used) and connection (belonging to people and community). Youth-led grantmaking exercises all three at once — young people are trusted with real money, real decisions and real responsibility for their communities.

That is why this page sits alongside our overview of the science of resilience in children: YouthBank is a working example of the ordinary magic that research describes — ordinary young people given meaningful roles, with adults who support without taking over.

The worries everyone has. Handled.

If you can run a raffle, you can support a YouthBank panel. The concerns are reasonable — and the model has answers built in.

Grantmaking terms, in plain English

Grant panels have a jargon problem. Here is the vocabulary a YouthBank panel member meets, translated.

Grant

Money given for a project that does not need to be repaid — unlike a loan.

Panel

The group that reviews applications and decides the awards. In a YouthBank, the panel is made of young people.

Applicant

The person or group asking for money. In a YouthBank, typically young people with a project idea.

Eligibility

The rules about who can apply — age, location, project type. Each YouthBank sets its own.

Criteria

The published standards a panel uses to judge applications — what the money is for, and what a strong application looks like.

Priorities

What the panel has decided its area needs most this funding round — set locally, by the young panel.

Budget

The applicant’s plan for what the money will buy. Panels read budgets closely — they are where vague ideas get specific.

Award

A grant the panel has decided to make.

Conflict of interest

When a panel member knows an applicant personally. Not a scandal — a declared fact; the member steps out of that decision.

Feedback

The explanation given to unsuccessful applicants. Good feedback turns a rejection into a better application next time.

Reporting

Telling the community and funders what was awarded and why — the panel’s public accountability.

Funding round

One cycle of the process: priorities set, applications invited, decisions made, awards reported.

Safeguarding

The duty-of-care system that keeps everyone involved in the process safe — held by adult staff, not the young panel.

Adult ally

An adult who supports the panel’s process without taking over its decisions — the defining YouthBank role.

Frequently asked questions