Grantmaking and Funding 2025 winners: Steve Morgan Foundation
Why it won
- Collaboration: The Cradle to Career programme engages 43 local partners including the local authority.
- Effectiveness: In two years, the reading age for over 1,600 children has improved exponentially and the number of young people at risk of being taken into care has significantly reduced.
- Replicability: The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is investing £5.25m to extend the programme into five more wards.
Steve Morgan had an undefined but determined notion that something different needed to be done to deliver systemic and long-term change for young people in North Birkenhead, one of the most deprived areas in the Liverpool City region. This led to the hugely impactful Cradle to Career programme.
Birkenhead was once a thriving area of industry, with its docks helping to power the global economy and the area a major supplier of ships to the US. Today the dockyard is full of abandoned ships and the opportunities for work were never replaced. In Birkenhead as a whole, there are 0.62 jobs for every person aged 16- 65, the third lowest of 162 areas nationally. Male residents have a healthy life expectancy of around 52 years, 11 years below the national average. The children of Bidston and St. James’ ward in North Birkenhead are among the top 2% deprived in the country, with more than one in two experiencing poverty.
From the outset, the shape of the project was designed to be community-led and collaborative. The foundation initiated a12-month discovery period to establish priority focus areas: significantly improve literacy standards among children; give families easy access to support; and create new opportunities for young people. It pledged a £2m initial investment, alongside support from funding partners including Wirral Council.
The council created a new 17-strong multidisciplinary team as the bedrock of a new approach to working with families, and this team has collaborated with 43 local partners to deliver the programme.
In just two years the reading age for more than 1,600 children has improved exponentially; the number of young people at risk of being taken into care has significantly reduced; and Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission are using the programme as an example of best practice for family support.
Following its impact in North Birkenhead, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is now investing £5.25m to extend the programme into five more of the region’s most deprived wards.
Charity Awards judge André Clarke, director of charity development at Lloyds Bank Foundation, described the programme as a “spot-on example of taking a multidisciplinary and multisectoral approach to investment in an area”. He noted that the intervention district had changed from being the highest-need community in the Wirral since records began, to the fourth-highest, and had also gone from being the worst to the best-performing community in terms of take-up of early-years support.
CC Reg. no. 1087056
Highly Commended
Cumbria Community Foundation
The West Cumbria Opportunities and Challenges community needs report, prepared by Cumbria Community Foundation (CCF) in February 2019, identified the region’s deep-rooted socio-economic issues. Specifically, it noted that 3,900 children live in poverty, one in seven households earn less than £10,000 annually, and one in four adults lack qualifications. Transforming West Cumbria (TWC) is a social investment programme addressing the region’s toughest social challenges, led by CCF and funded by Sellafield Ltd. A 2024 evaluation confirmed its success, generating £19.9m in social value, or £5.34 per £1 invested. Outcomes included better financial security and mental health support for local people, more volunteering and a more resilient voluntary sector.
Project Giving Back
Project Giving Back was set up by two private philanthropists who wanted to support a variety of charitable causes after the pandemic. To date, it has awarded grants worth over £20m to fund 42 charity gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which attracts over 168,000 visitors and a global audience of millions, many with significant giving potential. Through collaboration with professional gardeners, charities benefit from a powerful storytelling platform which creates a terrific opportunity for fundraising and awareness-building. A key criterion for selection is the charity’s ability to relocate the garden after the show. Locations include hospitals, schools and community spaces, making nature and beautiful design accessible to a wider audience and leaving a lasting legacy.
