Deadline: 5 April 2019

The Ufi Charitable Trust is accepting application for its VocTech Specialist Program 2019 to support innovation in adult vocational skills provision to directly tackle the issues which result from the changing nature of work. It is focused on how digital tech can help bridge the gap between the skills that employers want and the skills that employees possess.

Their funding supports projects that show potential to have real impact in the world of vocational learning by making a difference to how people learn, to the number of people gaining new skills and to business efficiency.

Type of Project

Applicants can apply for either of their funding types:

• VocTech Seed – Early Stage Ideas Up to £50,000 up to 12 months in duration
  • Projects with early stage ideas that can prototype and demonstrate novel approaches to employer-led vocational learning. They are keen to support genuinely innovative ideas that involve small groups of learners and employers in their development and testing.
• VocTech Impact – Delivery at Scale £150k- £300 up to 24 months in duration
  • Projects that can deliver to many learners and make a significant difference to reskilling the UK workforce and the number of people gaining new skills. These projects will have already proved the concept and have completed some prototype work and require larger scale user testing and support to scale the product or service.

They are looking for both types of approaches as they will provide Ufi with a pipeline of demonstrators to showcase how VocTech can help create lasting change and have a real impact on vocational learning.

What will VocTech Specialist 2019 fund?

Ufi will be seeking innovative projects which use digital vocational technology to:

• Support employers to upskill or reskill the workforce to meet identified industry / sector needs
• Help tackle the persistence of low skill: low wage employment
• Work with employers and learners to prepare people for the kind of jobs they never thought they could do – or didn’t even know existed
• Support groups of individuals who are most at risk / disproportionally impacted by the widening gap between the skills employers need and the skills individuals have

Projects must do one of the following:

• Reskill adults who are in work to ensure the skills they have are relevant to meet changing needs of the sector / industry
• Reskill adults who are in work to enable them to transition into new sectors / industries
• Provide a route into work

For this call they are NOT looking for:

• Generic access to employment training that is not directly related to specific job opportunities and employer needs
• Careers Information Advice & Guidance projects in isolation – but this could be part of a larger process
• Learning management systems

Eligible Project

Projects must:

• Focus on vocational learning
• Provide an innovative digital solution to a defined learning issue
• Offer new learning tools, not just new learning content
• Understand who the users and the customers will be and the likely route to market
• Have ambition for the future growth of the project and a vision for how it could be scaled
• Be willing to enter a discovery phase, to learn and shape their thinking as a result.

Eligibility Criteria

• The call is open to all organisations, including charities, trade bodies, existing learning providers and employers who would like to test new approaches to using digital technology for vocational learning.
• For this call they are particularly interested in applications from organisations who don’t necessarily have a track record in developing and delivering digital learning products in the vocational market. They are keen to support applications from organisations who have a strong understanding of and good connections to their target market.
• All organisations who apply should be willing to enter a discovery phase, to learn and shape their thinking as a result. The discovery phase is intended to provide the time to help projects to determine whether to proceed with their original product proposals or to adapt their path; and needs applicants who are sufficiently flexible and open-minded to undertake this process.
• The majority of organisations they fund are UK-based.  They will consider applications from outside the UK if they can clearly demonstrate how they will address vocational learning challenges faced in the UK.
• Their approach to collaborations
  • They know that applications can be strengthened by demonstrating a collaborative approach, especially where employers and digital learning specialists are working together. They are flexible about how collaborative activities are structured, and details of how this will work should be set out in the application.
• If applicants organisation is not a charity:
  • Ufi funds projects involving charities, private companies, community interest companies and other not for profit organisations.  As a charity itself, Ufi must ensure that any grant given to any organisation that is not also a charity demonstrates public benefit. The questions they ask in their application forms help us understand how applicants proposal can have a beneficial public outcome, both immediately and in the longer term.

How to Apply

Interested applicants can apply online via given website.

For more information, please visit https://www.ufi.co.uk/voctech-specialist-guidelines