The First #iWill Fund Learning Hub LabStorms

Introduction

This report summarises learning from the first set of LabStorms facilitated by the Centre for Youth Impact. The workshops brought together #iwill Fund Match Funders to explore shared challenges in youth social action funding. The aim was to generate ideas, strengthen collaboration, and support learning across the programme funders.

Findings

The LabStorms explored challenges in youth social action funding. Participants highlighted the importance of shared understanding, collaboration and relationship-building. The report emphasises collective learning, problem-solving and strengthening connections between funders supporting young people.  

Key insights and opportunities from this research highlight the importance of balancing a focus on young people with a broader understanding of community benefit. They also identify areas where further support, learning and evidence are needed.

Funders maintaining a focus on youth-led, high-quality social action while ensuring organisations embed community benefit in their planning, delivery and evaluation.

Funders needing to communicate that they value community benefit. Funders can signal the importance of community benefit through their communications, helping to shape sector priorities and engage a wider range of community-based organisations.

Communicating that they value community benefit does not mean funders need to measure it quantitatively. Rather than relying on complex metrics, funders can encourage low-stakes evaluation approaches that capture community experiences and intended or unintended outcomes.

We need to understand how social action habits differ. More research is needed into how young people develop lasting social action habits and how these pathways vary across different forms of participation.

We need to factor in young people’s different backgrounds if the conditions for habit formation are to emerge. Funders can help address participation inequalities by supporting and learning from programmes that help young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds develop lasting social action habits.

Does supporting young people to engage in campaigning activities require different forms of support to other social action activities? As campaigning remains a less common form of social action, funders should ensure appropriate support is available for young people who want to participate in it.