Learning
What we are learning from our grant making.
Where does our funding go?
Dress rehearsal, Brighton People’s Theatre. Photo credit: Rosie Powell
Find out more about our grant making and our different funds.
Main areas of funding
In 2024/25, we approved 291 grants totalling £35.9 million. 80 per cent of the value of our funding went towards our six strategic priority areas of funding.
These areas each have an open fund anyone can apply to: Arts Fund, Ideas and Pioneers Fund, India Fund, Migration Fund, Youth Fund, and both our Arts-based Learning Fund and Teacher Development Fund which come under our arts education strategic priority.
Open funding
The vast majority of grants in our six priority areas are made through an open application process.
Grant spend by fund 2024/25
- The Arts Education portfolio is made up of two funds: the Arts-based Learning Fund and the Teacher Development Fund.
- The Ideas and Pioneers Fund makes up nearly half of the value of funding in our Nurturing Ideas and People portfolio, with the other half going towards Awards for Artists.
- The Youth Fund comprises approximately half of the value of funding made in our Investing in Young People portfolio, with the other half made up of invitation-only funding.
Applications
In 2024/25, decisions were made on 885 applications to our UK open funds, resulting in 128 grants. On average, 14% of applications across all of our UK open funding were successful.
Application approval rate by fund
Racial justice funding
We have conducted an annual racial justice audit of our UK grant-making since 2020/21, using the toolkit provided by the Funders for Race Equality Alliance (FREA).
Overview
Of the £28.5 million funding audited in 2024/25, 32 per cent went to projects to benefit communities experiencing racial inequity. This is lower than in previous years, likely reflecting changes to the racial justice audit’s definition of communities experiencing racial inequity, which no longer automatically includes all those with experience of migration.
In 2024/25, 17 per cent of funding went to grants to organisations ‘led by and for’ communities experiencing racial inequity, which is largely comparable to previous years.
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Following the FREA audit, we now define ‘led by’ organisations as those where at least 50% of the Board and 50% of senior staff came from communities experiencing racial inequity. For more discussion on methodological changes made over time to our racial justice audit, see p.5 of the latest FREA report.
Applications
This chart compares the application approval rates by fund and the applicant organisation’s leadership.
As in previous years, the approval rate for applicants from ‘led by’ organisations was higher (19% compared to 14%) than for all organisations. This was also true for the Arts Fund and Youth Fund. For the Arts-based Learning Fund and Teacher Development Fund, the approval rate for ‘led by’ organisations was 17% and 0% respectively, reflecting the low number of applications received from ‘led by’ organisations (six and two applications respectively). The low number of applications from ‘led by’ organisations to these funds is likely to reflect the fact that there are relatively low numbers of ‘led by’ schools and arts organisations that work in schools.
As part of our commitment to anti-racism, we are seeking to increase the proportion of applications from ‘led by’ organisations, for instance by raising awareness of our funding opportunities and improving the accessibility of our application processes. The percentage of all applications received from ‘led by’ organisations increased from 10% to 15%.
Racial Justice Audit Analysis of PHF’s UK Grant-making 2024/25
Explore the findings of our most recent racial justice audit in the context of previous results. You can also see this report in an Easy Read version.
Related content
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Funding
Our funds focus on arts, education and learning, migration and young people.