The Mayor’s Fund for London is an independent, non-political children and young people’s charity supporting in the range of 35,000-40,000 young people per annum. It has an independent Board of Trustees and raises all its own income. The Mayor of London is its patron.
The charity’s mission is to help young Londoners, regardless of background, to thrive. To do this it currently focuses on supporting those from lower-income backgrounds in three impact areas:
- Food and wellbeing: Our mission is to eradicate food insecurity and social isolation amongst children and young people in London.
- Numeracy: Ensure that no child in London leaves school without a positive attitude to maths.
- Employability and enterprise: Level the playing field in access to great careers for young Londoners from lower income backgrounds and their better off peers.
Our work straddles delivery (with our preferred operating model being through collaboration and partnership) and campaigning, with the charity able to use its unusual position at the heart of London to convene and support partners to increase the opportunities on offer to young Londoners. We also seek to place young people at the heart of what we do. We have an active Youth Board and work to embed ‘youth voice’ into our campaigning, research and delivery activities. An overview of our activity in our three chosen impacts is below.
Food and wellbeing
No child can thrive if they are hungry, suffer from poor nutrition or are socially isolated. As a result, the Mayor’s Fund for London has been active in the field of food insecurity for many years. In particular, in 2017, it moved into the ‘holiday activities and food’ space, having identified that young Londoners from lower-income backgrounds can struggle for sufficient good quality food over the school holidays and suffer a greater degree of ‘learning loss’ then their better off peers.
This led to the development of the charity’s ‘Kitchen Social’ programme, now the largest independent provider of holiday food and activities across the capital. Kitchen Social supports around 100 local community groups per annum with micro grants and other support to run food and activities schemes over the school holidays and, latterly, during the lockdown periods when schools are closed. In addition, in 2020, Kitchen Social piloted the Department for Education’s own version of the ‘Holiday Activities and Food’ (HAF) programme (in Lambeth and Southwark), which has now been rolled out across England. Independent evaluation of Kitchen Social by the University of Northumbria showed that the programme is successful not only in relation to tackling food insecurity, but also has a positive impact across a whole raft of social measures, including reducing social isolation, boosting wellbeing and helping families.
Food and wellbeing is set to be a central plank of the Mayor’s Fund’s strategy for the next three years. Despite the welcome announcement of Government funding for HAF in the Comprehensive Spending Review, it is extremely limited in scope, meaning that Trustees have agreed that Kitchen Social will run alongside HAF until at least 2025. The charity has therefore been developing new three-year funding partnerships, including with the National Lottery Community Fund, Bloomberg and others to support the programme. Kitchen Social is also supported by a range of hospitality partners.
The charity is set to run and expand its ‘Take & Make’ recipe box programme over the next few years. Initially developed during 2020 in response to the lockdown, this has just completed its pilot year, generating revenues of around £900,000 and a surplus for the charity to reinvest in its activities. Each recipe box contains ingredients for four portions of healthy vegetarian food, alongside recipe cards and online videos made by young people and celebrity chefs. Take & Make boxes currently retail to local authorities, as well as being philanthropically funded and have the potential to be developed into a successful social enterprise under the umbrella of the charity.
The Mayor’s Fund also plays a central role across London in terms of convening and building the capacity of others. As one of the pioneers of Holiday Activities and Food, it has developed a wealth of experience, which, through its partnership with the Greater London Authority, it has been able to share with local authorities and others in order to ensure that Government funding for HAF is well used. In 2021, this included running a major training programme for London’s local government, plus commissioning research, which was launched at a pan London event in the Autumn.
Numeracy
Lack of confidence and attainment in maths is a major blockage to young people advancing into further and higher education and good quality careers. This is why the Mayor’s Fund is active in the field of numeracy, in particular running two pan-London inter-school maths competitions, one at primary and the other at secondary level, each with the objective of boosting attainment and making maths accessible and fun.
The least developed of the Mayor’s Fund’s impact areas, the charity has recently invested in a new position, Head of Numeracy, charged with developing thinking, partnerships and activity to support our strategic objective. As part of this, the two maths competitions (‘Count On Us’) are set to grow, with the secondary competition generously supported by the Jack Petchey Foundation. In addition, the charity is developing ideas for an inter-company maths competition (which would have the dual purpose of raising profile and income) and working with a coalition of partners on ‘Maths Week London’, aimed at increasing awareness and maths confidence.
Employability and enterprise
Lack of access to good quality careers advice, employability support and networks can be a major stumbling block to young people moving on to great careers, either because they are unaware of what is on offer or need the support to get into higher education or an apprenticeship. The Mayor’s Fund for London runs a variety of activity aimed at removing this access gap.
Highlights of 2021 include the expansion of our Access Aspiration programme, which works in secondary schools with high levels of Pupil Premium, to provide sixth formers with access to a menu of opportunities, including work experience, employability insights (visits to businesses), work simulation exercises, visits by companies to schools, CV support and interview practice, etc. The programme moved online during Covid, with the introduction of ‘Access All Area’ webinars and short recorded videos, where role models explain their background and career path in a relatable way. Around one hundred employers are now participating, with the focus on engaging employers from sectors which are traditionally difficult for those from lower-income backgrounds to penetrate, those which are simply less visible and those who offer good career pathways.
A further highlight is our sector based activity. The Mayor’s Fund has had a long-term focus on the creative sector through its programme, Creativity Works, funded by Citi Foundation. Delivered through partners, this helps young people who are not in education, employment or training to access creative sector careers, including through self employment. This year it is on track to support around 80% of participants into employment or training outcomes.
2021 also saw the charity target the built environment sector, where the charity launched a collaborative sector-based campaign to increase diversity in built environment industries. Eighteen founding partners backed the campaign, which launched to an audience of around 150 at an autumn event. Companies are now signing up to the Mayor’s Fund’s Diversity Pledge, which commits companies to a set of principles in terms of recruitment and support for younger workers, plus asks them to carry out at least one new action over the course of the following 12 months. 2022 will see a series of events and activities to support the built environment sector, with signatories to the Diversity Pledge asked to report back on progress throughout 2022.
The Mayor’s Fund works with the Greater London Authority on the Mayor’s Entrepreneur Programme, which is a dragon den style competition for students from London’s higher education institutions. The 2022 competition, which launched in the autumn of 2021, has five categories of awards: creative industries, environment, health, tech and social enterprise (focused on creative ideas to support Londoners from a social perspective in areas such as mental health and food poverty).
Areas we’re working on
Although we are really proud of what we have achieved in recent years, we are also aware that there is more to do. In particular, we know that we must do more to drive understanding of our mission and to increase our profile across a range of audiences. We are also aware that we could be more digitally enabled. Although the charity successfully moved many of its services online as soon as Covid struck, there is still work to be done to embed the charity fully into the digital world. As our strategy sets out, we are also committed to integrating our work more effectively across our impact areas and increasing the number of long-term strategic partnerships (we already enjoy a good number of these), particularly with corporate supporters.
Corporate information
The Mayor’s Fund for London has around 20 staff, plus a number of contractors working on defined areas of activity. An organogram can be found in the supporting information section. The Chief Executive currently has five direct reports: Director of Business Development (income generation); Director of Finance; Director of Education and Employability; Director of Strategy and Campaigns; and Head of Food and Wellbeing (new postholder is starting in January 2022).
Financially, the charity will have finished its 2021 calendar year in a strong place, with unrestricted reserves above the policy level. A number of its programmes, particularly Kitchen Social and Access Aspiration, are in a strong place financially for 2022, although more income is always welcome in order to enable more delivery. Access Aspiration moved to a fee for service model during 2020/21, which, along with income from trusts, foundations and some larger corporate partners, has made this fully sustainable. Take & Make operates primarily on an earned income, social enterprise model. Creativity Works and the Count on Us secondary programme have had the same supporters for many years.
Our unrestricted income is generated from a range of places, including through charity partnerships, events, contribution to core costs from restricted grants and corporate partnerships. Covid allowing, we intend to run a major fundraising dinner/auction in 2022.
Our financial year is the calendar year. The accounts for 2020 can be found in the supporting information section. A snapshot of our management accounts from November 2021 are available on request.
We have a stable and committed Board of Trustees, which we wish to extend during 2022. We also have an active Youth Board, who support many aspects of our work.