The next generation of changemakers is ready. Are you going to join us in backing them?
The Spark Awards is Big Change's open-call funding programme, which finds and backs young leaders aged 18–28 across England. We offer them with early-stage grants and a tailored learning and development programme. We invest in their ideas, in their individual leadership journey, and bring them together as a cohort of peers who support and inspire each other long after the programme ends.
Surfacing young leaders with genuinely visionary ideas can be difficult. The majority of funding still flows to leaders of organisations with established track records and existing networks, rather than those closest to the problems and with lived experience.
Big Change aims to disrupt that pattern. In 2025, we backed six extraordinary young leaders driving bold new approaches across mental health, climate action, community power, career readiness, and media literacy. Together, they're not just running projects. They're reshaping the systems that affect young people's lives. Say hello to them!
Join us to back the next cohort in 2027. Reach out to Hannah, our partnerships director at hannah.p@big-change.org.
The impact of the Spark Awards extends beyond supporting up to 10 individuals.
We’re aiming to shift mindsets, norms and power dynamics:
Young people are too often excluded from shaping solutions to the challenges they face. Through careful outreach and an open, accessible application process, we find leaders who wouldn't typically have access to funding, networks, or development opportunities and make sure they do.
The programme has been designed with paid young people from the start. That extends to the funding decisions too, with a panel of young people, sector experts and community members assessing applications together, broadening who gets a say.
Most grants for young leaders sit between £2k–£10k. We provide up to £35k, because ambitious ideas need real resources to be tested and refined, not just enough to get off the ground.
We can't assume we know what each cohort needs. The cohort's learning programme is shaped with the Spark Awardees, so our support stays responsive to their evolving ideas rather than following a fixed script.
The Spark Awards brings together leaders across generations and sectors. The challenges young people face don't exist in isolation, and neither should the people working to change them. Recipients get peer support, mentoring, and connections that set them up for success.
Just as no single intervention creates systemic change, we know funding in isolation is not enough to drive it either. So Big Change and Virgin Unite have already teamed up to support the next generation of young leaders. You can:
Fund the full Spark Awards programme: Catalyse a shift in the ecosystem by giving real agency to young people in how funding decisions are made and placing more funding directly into the hands of young leaders.
Fund young leader’s journeys: Support deep learning and support by investing in the co-designed programme that helps young leaders thrive over the long term – including coaching, peer learning, leadership development, and community hang-outs.
Fund the hidden costs that make change possible: Support the often unseen but essential work that underpins the Spark Awards – outreach, storytelling, and impact measurement. This infrastructure is what allows us to identify extraordinary young leaders, build the evidence base needed to make the case for funding young leaders at an earlier-stage, and amplify their impact over time.
We’d love to explore how we can work together. Reach out to Hannah at hannah.p@big-change.org, or let us know you're interested by sharing your details below.
Reach out to us at info@big-change.org
We'd love to hear from you!
