This article provides information about the decision-making process for Catalyser Round 5, including:

  • Common reasons why applicants were not taken forward to the next stage of the process; and
  • Detail about how Youth Music’s current priorities and equitable approach to decision-making informed our decisions. 

Key stats for this round

  • We received 204 applications requesting almost £31 million. The total budget we have available this round is just over £4.5 million.
    • In London alone, we received applications to the value of £7.9 million. Over 25% of the applications received were from London.
  • Two thirds of the expressions of interest received have been rejected, with only 33% invited to make a full application.
  • We expect around 60% of those making a full application will be awarded a grant.
  • The overall success rate for Catalyser Fund Round 5 will be around 16%. Meaning most applicants (84%) will be unsuccessful. 

This year’s grant budget has increased by £400,000 thanks to our Rescue the Roots fundraising campaign. We have raised over £200,000 and matched this with the same amount from our reserves. We wish this figure was higher so we could better meet demand. We are working hard to increase it.

How we made our decisions

When reviewing your application, we consider how good a fit your proposal is for the Catalyser Fund alongside the skills and experience of your organisation, and how well both align with Youth Music and our priorities. We then select applications based on our current priorities and our equitable approach to decision-making. Read on for more information.  

What makes a good fit for Catalyser Fund? 

Catalyser Fund is for established organisations with a track record in delivering inclusive music work with children and young people facing barriers. So, we are looking for organisations who have experience in the work they are proposing. Organisations who demonstrated they were embedded in the communities they wanted to work with were more likely to be successful. 

If you are new to this work, have a short track record in working with young people, or wanted to try something new, then your application was probably declined because Catalyser Fund is not the best fit for your current stage of development. Our Trailblazer Fund is a better match for that. 

We received several applications requesting relatively low request amounts (i.e. between £30k -£40k). Whilst Catalyser Fund will support organisations at this level, we often had questions over whether the scale of the activities proposed would enable you to meet all the Catalyser requirements. We don’t advise coming in for less than £40k unless you’re going to bring in a lot of additional cash match funding to be able to deliver on all the Catalyser Fund requirements. 

What made a good proposal?

Youth Voice and co-design is central to Youth Music funding. Priority was given to applicants with solid youth voice and participation practices, who clearly demonstrated how children and young people had co-designed the programme or outlined clear plans for how co-design would take place.

The strongest applicants weaved the voices of the young people they support into their application. They told us about their codesign process, but also what they had learnt from this process, so we could see a clear throughline from co-design to proposed activities. Our Youth Voice Hub has lots of resources and ideas for those that want to further develop their youth voice practice.

Good applications demonstrated an inclusive approach to working with children and young people facing barriers and showed a track record in doing so. We could see that the way they work with children and young people is led by their needs and interests first and foremost. Their applications might also have demonstrated how they anticipate people’s access needs, employ staff with similar backgrounds and lived experiences as the intended participants, or have support from partners and other agencies. For projects working with d/Deaf, Disabled or Neurodivergent children and young people we could clearly see how they had designed their work around the social model of disability.

We want to support projects that give young people time to develop and progress. Therefore, projects that consisted of one-off or short-term activities were not prioritised.

Often, the best proposals were really clear about what they wanted to do. They followed the guidance and addressed each of the questions in turn. Where an application is unclear, we always try to read between the lines. But if you are new to funding or it’s not your area of expertise, then it’s worth getting someone else to review your application before you submit. Remember, if you identify as d/Deaf, Disabled or Neurodivergent then you can apply to our Application Access Fund to get help with your application. But to reassure Youth Music does not assess areas such as spelling or grammar, the layout of your answers, the production quality of any documents/videos you attach or link to, or use of standard English. 

Why were the majority of applications declined?

It’s with a heavy heart that we say ‘no’ to funding applications. Especially now, when demand is at an all-time high and the grassroots sector faces a funding crisis. 

Most proposals were rejected due to competition and available budget. During our decision-making, we consider multiple aspects and aim to be equitable. These aspects include the quality of the application, the type of work proposed, where it will take place, and the organisations who have applied. As many applications we receive are fundable, this process helps us to prioritise our decision-making. Many fundable applications missed out as we prioritised an equitable, diverse and balanced portfolio.

  • Demand was high across all regions, but we received a particularly high number of applications from London, which made this region much more competitive.
  • ‘Children and Young People Facing Barriers’ and ‘Young Adults’ funding themes were the most oversubscribed.
  • We gave priority, wherever possible, to Early Years and Youth Justice focused applications, as we look to increase our investment in these areas. You can read more about our funding themes on page 10 of the Catalyser Fund guidance.
  • Proposals working with d/Deaf, Disabled and neurodivergent Young People remain a priority, but we didn’t invite through as many as we might have done in previous funding rounds. This is because £2.25million of additional investment will be going into this funding theme through a targeted fund launching later this year working across all creative art forms. Sign up to our mailing list to be kept up to date on this opportunity. Working beyond music is something we must do as part of our Arts Council National Lottery funding requirements – we’ve chosen to focus on Disabled young people as a matter of equity. 

 

Telling us about relevant skills & experience

We review all links and attachments you submit including your website and social media. Due to the volume of applications received, we did not have time to follow-up where information was missing, or links didn’t work. So, make sure you double-check your application before submission including the expiry dates of any download links. 

As the Catalyser Fund is looking to fund experienced organisations we are looking for clear information about your track record in the work proposed. Often organisations submitted something very general about their organisation and their work, which wasn’t always related to music or the young people they wanted to work with. We strongly advise that you ensure the additional information you submit really captures your work, relevant to the project you’re proposing to us. 

Using AI in your application 

We know that organisations use AI to help with their funding applications. However, if you do use AI to help you draft your application, please make sure it’s an honest reflection of your work and plans. We often find AI answers don’t tell us enough about your actual practices, and this can have a negative impact on your assessment. AI answers often read as generic, and don’t reflect your uniqueness. This can make it hard to understand who you are as organisation. As a result, your application is less convincing. Remember, you’re the experts! So, it’s always important to review anything generated by AI to ensure it reflects your voice and brings through your passion, knowledge and experience. 

What are Youth Music’s current priorities?

Catalyser funds work to sustain, scale up or create sector change. In the current climate, we’re really concerned about sustaining the grassroots youth and community organisations that are so central to our mission. So, the majority of applications invited to make a full application were seeking to ‘sustain’ their programmes.

The small amount of ‘scale up’ programmes we invited to full application demonstrated:

  • A track record of the work they wanted to grow (i.e. with the same groups of children and young people and for similar activity).
  • Demand for increased delivery.
  • Strategic plans for growth (i.e. incremental scale up relative to their current size and turnover).

Organisations currently or recently funded by Youth Music 

Youth Music is proud to invest in organisations over the long-term and has seen the impact this has. When reviewing applications from organisations currently or recently funded by us we wanted to see: 

  • Clear demonstration of the continued impact of your programme, and that you are continually reflecting and understand what works.
  • When it needs to, your practice is moving on, based on learning from your young people and the wider sector.
  • You have taken on board previous feedback or advice from Youth Music.
  • A reflection of our current priorities (as outlined in this blog), which have changed in recent years.

So, whilst we understand the need for sustained funding from Youth Music, we need to understand that your work is continuing to evolve and is relevant to the needs of the young people and communities you serve. 

Additionally, we encourage all organisations to continually look to evolve and develop their leadership and staff teams. Youth Music prioritises investment into diverse-led organisations.  We often see older, more established organisations having less diverse leadership than those newer to the portfolio.

Finally, your previous grant management track record is taken into account – if you have a history of late reporting, poor communication with us or poor programme delivery it is likely that you were rejected. 

We’re unable to prioritise work in schools 

We are unable to fund schools or academies directly (including primary, secondary, PRUs and special schools), GCSE or A Level Music, music curriculum activity, whole class tuition taking place in school or individual tuition fees to learn an instrument in school. If your application included these areas, you were likely rejected. 

Youth Music was established to support work taking place in local communities and outside of school settings. Due to the current demands on our funding, we are not able to prioritise work taking place in school settings, even if it’s well-targeted and delivered by an external organisation. Most school-based proposals we received were rejected. 

Equitable funding decisions

We try to invest our funding equitably – where it’s needed the most. Applications with little targeting towards children and young people facing barriers were unlikely to proceed.

In general, we prioritised organisations:

  • With a turnover of £100,000 to £250,000 (those big enough to have a track record, but in the category shown to be most at risk of closure in our recent funding crisis survey).
  • Without other core funding.
    • This meant it was difficult for many Arts Council NPOs or Music Education Hub Lead Organisations to be prioritised, unless they were working in cold spots, with partners, and at significant scale.
    • Work in schools, or that looked similar to Music Education Hub core offers (e.g. 1:1 instrumental tuition or whole class instrumental learning), were not prioritised. This is because there is already significant other investment into this type of work.

We also consider 'place' in equitable funding:

  • Each region of the country is allocated a budget range, to ensure that everywhere gets a minimum amount of investment. Similarly, we don’t want to over-invest in places where we receive the highest number of applications. This meant that the success rate in London (which submitted more than double the number of applications of any other region) was much lower than average.
  • We prioritise local authorities based on a combination of factors including numbers of children and young people, deprivation statistics, rurality and existing investment.

Our grant-making is participatory, and we involve our advisors in the decision-making processes to bring external perspectives into the process.

 

What next? 

Future deadlines 

If you’d like to stay in touch with us, you can sign up to our monthly newsletter which has full details of future funding rounds and free online learning opportunities.

For Catalyser Fund Round 5 - applicants who have been invited to submit a full application have around six weeks to submit and will hear the outcome in late October 2025. The next stage remains competitive – we envisage the success rate will only be around 60%.

  • The next Trailblazer Fund deadline will be 29 August 2025, with awards made in December 2025.
  • The next Catalyser Fund deadline will be May 2026, with awards made in October 2026.

 

Unclear why you didn’t make it through to stage two?

If, after you’ve read this article, you’re still unclear why you didn’t make it through to the next stage of the application process, feel free to drop us an email to grants@youthmusic.org.uk. Please be aware that we due to the volume of applications it will take us a while to work through feedback requests – we appreciate your understanding with this.