Using expertise in skills to unlock change for people leaving prison

The context

The Giving Department has supported City & Guilds for more than 10 years, including helping to establish the City & Guilds Foundation in 2019 and supporting its grantmaking and social impact strategy. We identified an opportunity to apply City & Guilds' expertise in skills, employment and industry to one of the UK's most persistent social challenges: helping people leaving prison gain the skills and opportunities to secure employment. This led to the Future Skills Commission for Prisons and, in 2020, the launch of the £1m Big Idea Fund.

The challenge

Prison education does not always connect with the skills employers need or with sustainable employment after release. Innovative organisations can struggle to secure funding to test new approaches in a complex, risk-averse system. Philanthropy needed to show what works, using relatively modest investment to unlock wider change and funding.

What we did

We helped go beyond traditional grantmaking:

• Designing the Future Skills Commission as a vehicle for action, bringing together senior leaders from prisons, skills and business
• Designing the Big Idea Fund, focused on innovative, collaborative and potentially scalable approaches
• Strategic challenge and practical support throughout the grantmaking process, building a portfolio of programmes across sectors including construction, rail and green skills
• Embedding learning and collaboration, connecting funded organisations and wider stakeholders to share evidence