Our vision is that “We want to see a world where young people are listened to and empowered to reach their full potential in life and a world where their communities look on them with pride and feel excitement for the future”.

Our mission is to; “Provide young people with the opportunity to practically develop the skills, confidence and self awareness needed to better reach their potential and play a positive role in their community”

The history of the Keyfund falls into three periods. The first when it was simply ‘The Keyfund’, an initiative based in youth projects. The second when it became a Federation, employed a Regional Co-ordinator and received £1million for development from the Northern Rock Foundation and the third when it was selected by the Impetus Trust for investment and started to develop a growth model for the future.

The Keyfund
The Federation began its life in 1992 as The Keyfund, the brainchild of the members of Youthworks North East, a youth work practitioners forum initiated by the Social Welfare Research Unit at the University of Northumbria. Its origins lie in two earlier pieces of work: the City Programme in Adelaide, Australia in the 1970s and the Enterprise Skills Development Project in Sunderland in the 1980s. This work centred on the development of 12 specified key skills.

Initially, 14 youth projects were involved, each committed to developing this innovative educational project. The Keyfund began to support young people and practitioners. Initially, a single Keyfund was established covering Tyneside, Wearside and County Durham. It offered funding to young people involved in the founding agencies. Primarily, though not exclusively, these agencies were voluntary and statutory detached youth work projects. Further funding followed and the Keyfund started to grow.

The Keyfund Federation
In 1997, the Keyfund became the Keyfund Federation, a Charitable Limited Company with a voluntary Board of Directors. A full-time Co-ordinator was appointed. This support enabled the Federation to widen access to the Keyfund process for more young people and practitioners across the region. Over the next 4 years it grew extensively, as did the need for a structure to support and sustain its growth.

A development plan was agreed to establish a number of Keyfund networks across the region which were managed locally and supported regionally by the Federation.

At the end of 2001, nearly a dozen Networks were established. They grew from local commitment and local funding, drawn from a variety of sources. Some were based on founding Keyfund projects, like Sherburn Road Estate in Durham City, two youth projects in Sunderland in Pennywell and Hendon, and Scotswood Youth Strategy in Newcastle. These projects employed full-time Keyfund workers to nurture and administer the process.

Other Networks were based on geographical areas, like defined parts of Newcastle (eg Benwell, and Walker and Monkchester) and Northumberland (Blyth Valley and Wansbeck). The first of the county-wide Networks was County Durham, to be followed by Sunderland City.

As well as Networks continuing to develop, contacts were fostered with a range of groups whose members did not necessarily have access to the Keyfund, such as Sunderland Young Asian Voices, The Foyer Federation, Newcastle Women Workers Network and the Gateshead-based Lawnmowers theatre group.

There were regional and national dimensions to the work. In 2002-3, the Keyfund was involved in the Innovations Partnership, a regional initiative to promote best practice in youth work, piloted by the National Youth Agency. Interest in the Keyfund came regularly from outside the North East and there has been contact with organisations in London, Glasgow, Birmingham and North Wales.

In February 2002, the Northern Rock Foundation awarded the Federation a grant of £1 million for its ‘Big Idea’ initiative, to be developed over three years. The organisation then altered it’s status by becoming a Registered Charity with its Board of Directors also becoming Trustees.

The Big Idea funding heralded a sea-change in the organisation. For the first time ever, all the Keyfund Networks were secured funding for at least 3 years. In just over a year, the regional staff team grew from 3 to 8 and new Networks were initiated. In addition, some Networks had full or part time Development workers. The rate of Keyfund training accelerated and membership nearly doubled, reaching over 900 by May 2003.

At its peak the Keyfund supported over 9500 young people a year involved hundreds of different projects from across the North East region. At the heart of the work remains the young people who learn through designing and carrying out their own projects.

During the Big Idea period, Young Cumbria funded a Development Worker post in Cumbria and NRF provided 3 years of funding to develop the Sunderland network, including costs for a Development Worker, Admin Worker and running costs. Northumberland and Tees Valley also had Development Workers for 18 months.

During this time different pilot schemes were also implemented. These include the Keyfund Juniorz (8-11yr olds), accreditation of the Keyfund Skills through OCN, Enterprise Insight (to support the development of young peoples enterprise projects), Shades of Green (environmental projects), NERD (projects to further young peoples careers), New Deal for Communities (project in the Newcastle New Deal area) and Kick up the Arts in Newcastle (for arts based projects).

The Big Idea posts were funded from 12 to 18 months. So following on from this huge investment from the Northern Rock Foundation, the Keyfund needed to consider its future with regard to its size, range of commitments, staffing levels and the ability to sustain the work beyond the end of the funding contract. Towards the end of 2004 a consultation was held with facilitators to gain their views on what Keyfunds future should look like. From that, the notion of a social licensing model was born.

Social Licensing - a new direction
In January 2005 a new Chief Executive was appointed. Their role was to consolidate the organisation after this period of rapid growth and to design, develop and implement the new licensing model in order to ensure the sustainability of Keyfund in the future and to assure the quality of Keyfund delivery on the ground.

At the head office a Finance Officer, Finance support worker and an additional admin worker came on board.

Links with Australia were re-established resulting in a programme being set up for aboriginal young people in New South Wales, using Keyfund principles.

In the summer of 2005 the Northern Rock Foundation were approached with the new social licensing model. They agreed to support the development of this model over the next three years and gave Keyfund the security and space they needed to embark on a challenging step change. This was to improve the quality throughout the entire organisation and then to prepare for future growth both inside and eventually outside of the North East.

In June 2006 Keyfund were the first charity north of London (and only the sixth charity overall) to be selected by the Impetus Trust for investment. This was after a year long assessment culminating in a thorough due diligence assessment, comprehensive sector and competition analysis which was conducted by OC&C strategy consultants. This piece of work alone would have cost the Keyfund over £90,000 and gave Keyfund a thorough understanding of their market and positioning, which has underpinned a revision of their strategy and helped to shape the Impetus investment.

The Impetus Trust is the UK’s first Venture Philanthropy funder. Impetus has committed to a long-term relationship with Keyfund comprising infrastructure funding of £360,000 over the period July 2006 to March 2011, £100,000 of which is funded directly by Impetus, £100,000 by The Trust for Education, based in Leeds, £100,000 from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and £60,000 from Rank Foundation. This financial investment is combined with ongoing management support and capacity building provided by Impetus Trust, focusing initially on business planning and support for growth.

Impetus will add significant value through leveraging in pro bono support from corporate and individual associates over the next 5 years.

By March 2008 a number of key achievements had been made.

• Built upon the Board of Directors using a skills audit to best support the new strategic plans.
• Business systems were reviewed and improvements mapped out and implemented
• A range of performance management indicators were identified – measuring both internal efficiency and external impact as part of a Balanced Scorecard
• IT capability was built to support the planned growth and new processes
• A Fundraising plan was developed for core costs and pot resources
• A premises move to the Ouseburn Valley
• The licensing model was piloted, evaluated, refined and is prepared for roll out
• A facilitators strategy was developed to support clear outcomes focusing on increased numbers of young people engaged and increased progression through the stages
• A new staffing structure was developed to incorporate two new senior staff members

The challenges for 2008/9 are to recruit and imbed the new staff members to have a fully functioning core team, complete the systems improvement implementation, drive up the quality of facilitator training and development (which should in turn drive up the number of young people engaged with Keyfund and their progression through the stages) and to roll out the new social licensing model.

Keyfund is therefore entering a very exciting and challenging time and can’t wait to see what the future will bring.