Read more about out partnership with IntoUniversityIf it wasn't for Impetus, IntoUniversity wouldn't be where it is today. That's just a truth about our charity. Impetus has been a fundamental part of our journey from one centre to where we are with 45 centres today.
Together with our portfolio of non-profit partners, we tackle the three most difficult challenges that affect a young person’s ability to succeed in life in Britain today.
Lost learning through absence, suspensions, exclusions from school
Stagnation in education attainment outcomes, which means many are missing out on key qualifications like GCSE English and maths
The large numbers of young people out of education, training and employment
These issues affect many young people, but they disproportionately affect those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Impactful* non-profit organisations have an important role in tackling these challenges, but they face barriers to achieving meaningful impact.
These challenges are most acute for leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds, who lead organisations that are disproportionately underfunded and often serve the young people facing the greatest barriers.
As a leading impact funder, since 2002, Impetus has been helping the best leaders build stronger organisations delivering the most promising interventions that support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed against the odds.
We provide the non-profit organisations in our portfolio with the essential ingredients for making real impact.
Our support follows a phased approach. The journey consists of six phases.
Invite applications and assess mutual fit through a thorough due diligence process
We look for organisations with:
Clarify purpose and direction
Build foundations for impact and growth
Evidence impact and accelerate growth
Drive large scale adoption
Maintain connection to Impetus community
On average for every organisation that we fund, we receive 100 applications to join our portfolio. Each partner that joins our portfolio will have undergone three months of due diligence.
At the end of each phase, we make investment decisions based on continued mission fit, evidence of organisational development, further potential the partner to grow its impact, and potential for Impetus to add value.
The majority of our partners stay in the portfolio until the end of Grow phase. A subset of partners with potential to achieve national scale take part in Scale phase.
Each partnership is managed by an Investment Director, with support from Investment Managers. IDs and IMs spend about a day per week with each partner.
Our model of support is deeply relational: our team build deep, trust-based relationships with CEOs and their team and creates space for them to raise and work through their most pressing strategic needs with our support.
Average income growth over a seven-year partnership with Impetus.
Average growth in reach over a seven-year partnership with Impetus.
Our policy and research work is a critical element in how we make change happen. We believe that if we want to make a difference to the lives of all young people, then we must engage in system change.
Hundreds of thousands of these young people (approx 30%) are currently persistently absent. Our research shows that this group of young people are also 40% less likely to achieve their GCSEs, which means that at the current rate of progress more than a million young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to fall short of this crucial outcome. GCSEs are vital for progression into sustained employment, and the gap in employment outcomes for this group also remains stagnant.
Through our work, we see many examples of high-impact interventions from third sector organisations who are delivering impact at an impressive scale. Their work transforms individual lives and achieves outcomes that would not have happened anyway. Single organisations making a difference to thousands of young lives is impressive. But no single organisation can solve systemic problems.
When the size of the problem requires reaching millions rather than thousands of young people, what is needed is systems change. If we want to improve outcomes for all young people regardless of background, engaging with policy isn’t optional, it is integral to achieving our mission. And at Impetus, we are in a unique position to do this work...
Working so closely with our portfolio partners means that we have deep insights into what policy changes will have a meaningful impact on the causes and effects of persistent disadvantage.
Our policy team takes what we know and works alongside other education and employment sector leaders to build the case for large-scale government intervention through:
Gathering new research and evidence to understand the challenge, to share alongside insight into what works from our portfolio partners.
Working in coalition with like-minded organisations to shape the public debate.
Directly influencing key figures through our networks in and connected to government, to drive change.
Our policy team is focused on ensuring more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are in school, gaining qualifications, and in long-term employment.
Discover how you can partner with us to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people across the UK.
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