Funding Guidelines
SHINE is a dynamic young charity set up to fund educational support programmes for children and young people from the most disadvantaged parts of London and Manchester. We focus on value for money investment and proven educational impact.
We believe that we can support effective intervention in the lives of children and young people by:
- finding sound organisations to fund;
- developing solid proposals with them which have measurable educational outcomes;
- rigorously monitoring and evaluating all funded projects, establishing the exact impact on raising educational achievement levels; and
- replicating successful projects elsewhere.
In order to achieve this we will fund only organisations and projects that meet our essential criteria below.
Organisations
We will consider funding organisations that can demonstrate that they are:
- well managed;
- in a healthy financial position;
- working with other local agencies, particularly schools and local authorities;
- providing venues and services which are open and accessible to all; and
- led by staff who have a high level of experience and competency.
Projects
We wish to fund projects that have the following key elements:
- the main focus is on educational subjects, especially promoting literacy, numeracy and science;
- content and methodology will excite and engage participants, making creative use of IT where appropriate;
- there are clear and measurable target educational outcomes (see monitoring and evaluation): principally this will mean linking to standardised tests (at primary level) and GCSEs or a recognised equivalent (at secondary level);
- a significant number of children / young people will be supported;
- these children / young people themselves want to improve their situation;
- the project will be sufficiently long term to support sustainable improvement;
- families of participants are linked to the project in a way which supports their child's learning;
- there is appropriate use of volunteers; and
- the project budget represents value for money.
SHINE wishes to build long term relationships and partnerships with the organisations we fund, so the majority of our grants are in excess of £20,000. We fund new start ups, pilots and development or replication of projects. We will also fund core costs.
Click here to find out about our current funding priorities.
SHINE will not fund
- individuals;
- the direct replacement of statutory funding;
- schools or other educational establishments, except where funding is for activities which are clearly additional;
- short term programmes;
- programmes targeted at specific subject or beneficiary groups;
- parenting programmes, where the primary focus is the parent rather than the child;
- activities promoting particular political or religious beliefs; or
- projects taking place outside Greater London, except projects that are part of SHINE's replication programme.
