FAQ: 14:19

For years Scotland has struggled to address the needs of young people who leave school and end up unemployed. This has a massive impact on the young people involved and on the communities where they live. We believe that sustained investment focused on the areas where there is most need will deliver long term change and offer a better future for up to 35,000 young people. There are also a number of extremely good voluntary sector organisations working in this area, and that meant there was already an infrastructure there that could cope with significant investment.

There was a completely open two-stage application process. We launched the 14:19 Fund in January 2008, and over 170 organisations submitted outline proposals. These were assessed by Inspiring Scotland’s Performance Advisors and by a group of experts working in this field and 44 organisations were invited to submit full proposals. These organisations received capacity building support to help them develop their proposals. All the full proposals were also assessed by Performance Advisors and a group of experts, and the work they were proposing to deliver was mapped against need. This meant we considered not only individual proposals but also how they would fit together in a portfolio that took into account geography, working with different age groups and providing a continuous pathway of support for the young people the organisations would be working with. In November 2008 a group of 24 organisations, or ‘ventures’, were invited to join the 14:19 Fund initial portfolio.