The Shackleton Foundation supports social leaders whose projects benefit young people in challenging circumstances.
We invest in entrepreneurial ideas, inspirational projects and promising leaders with the will to make a difference. We provide up to £10,000 of seed funding and support to enable aspiring leaders and social entrepreneurs to establish their own ventures. We look for long-lasting, far-reaching projects with the potential to provide solutions to intractable social problems faced by disadvantaged and socially marginalised young people.
We fund early-stage ‘social enterprises’. We understand social entrepreneurship as referring to the development of new models or approaches to social problems, with significant potential for breakthrough social impact. Projects should have a clear social purpose and diverse income streams: they should not be solely reliant on grants and donations.
True to the spirit of Shackleton himself, we support leaders with high risk, but high potential. These are projects that are often considered too risky for other funders and may struggle to gain funding from traditional sources. We focus our support on the people with the ideas, rather than their projects.
If you’re passionate about generating positive social change for disadvantaged young people and have an idea for how to do it, then we can provide the mentoring, training and funding to make it happen.
For Grant Making Guidelines click here and for Frequently Asked Questions click here.