About PHF

The work we fund takes many different approaches to meeting a wide range of needs but there are some common themes. We aim to support innovation and work that takes a participatory approach to achieving its objectives. Across all the programmes we are particularly concerned with children and young people and disadvantaged people. All grants are intended to serve our overall mission, which is to help people realise their potential and enjoy a better quality of life.

We operate through three programmes in the UK, concerned with the Arts, Education and Learning and Social Justice. Each programme runs both an Open Grants scheme and a number of Special Initiatives. ‘Open Grants’ are made in response to proposals from organisations that meet the Foundation’s interests and objectives. This includes supporting organisations to develop their own approaches to benefit their service users and communities.

Our Special Initiatives set out to achieve social change in a rather different way. Most involve a number of organisations or individuals working both separately and collaboratively, over a number of years, to achieve the overall strategic aims of the initiative, with PHF providing direction, coordination, and evaluation. With our Special Initiatives, we are particularly interested in disseminating what we learn and advocating for wide-reaching change where the initiative has shown that this could be of benefit to people and communities elsewhere.

We recognise that the positive impact of our funding for individuals and communities can sometimes be maximised by helping organisations to find better ways to do things and to develop new skills and strategies for sustaining their work. We therefore intend our funding to have an impact not only on individuals and communities directly, but also on the organisations that support them, and on practice and policy within their sectors.

About terminology

Definitional difficulties dog many discussions of outcomes and impact, with people using the terms to mean different things or using them interchangeably. In this report we have endeavoured to use the following definitions:

Outcomes: the results of a project or piece of funded work AND the categories of change included in our impact framework.

Impact: The overall difference made by PHF funding, or by a programme or intervention.