Our Mission
Innox Foundation exists to improve the mental health of young adults across the UK.
We invest in extraordinary organisations who share our mission. We prioritise those that take early and preventative approaches and whose work enriches the voluntary sector.
Our multi-year, flexible funding enables our partners to grow their impact so that more young adults can enjoy sustained good mental health.
The Background
We decided right from the start to apply a laser focus to our giving so as to develop our understanding of and expertise in our chosen field, as well as to ensure that our resources work as hard as possible.
We chose to focus on young adult’s mental health. Like many, we have been shocked by the steep decline in mental wellbeing among our younger generations. Young adults – those aged 18 to 25 – face unique stresses by virtue of being both ‘young’ and ‘adult’. They continue to be affected by issues related to self-esteem, peer pressure, drugs and alcohol, exams and relationships, while also facing additional pressures as they enter adulthood, such as leaving home to live independently, accessing housing, managing finances and finding employment.
Despite being among those most in need of our support, young adults can face a cliff edge of care. After turning 18, individuals can no longer access services earmarked for young people, while adult mental health services are often either not available or do not meet their circumstances, needs and interests. Furthermore, young adults can struggle to access support early as most mental health services focus on those in crisis rather than preventing issues from developing and escalating. These challenges are intensified for those living in poverty, leaving care or facing other social and economic disadvantage.
There is hope. The UK is home to some extraordinary non-profit organisations who have created and evidenced effective approaches to improving young adult’s mental health. We are proud that some of these have become our partners.
The need for effective understanding of what works to help this population is greater than ever.
About Us
We are a grant giving charity established in 2020. We believe in the power of collaboration to solve society’s biggest challenges and so decided to work towards our mission by partnering with others. We identify and fund high performing organisations who have the mental wellbeing of young adults at the heart of what they do.
We invest in organisations rather than fund projects. We take a relationship-based approach to grant making, placing considerable value on the partnerships that we hold with those that we fund. We offer our partners multi-year, unrestricted funding and aim to make their experience with us as positive as possible. We support our partners in ways that we hope put them in a better place to support young adults.
OUR TEAM
We are a small team, with a variety of work and life experience amassed between us. Our founders, Jacqui Edmiston and Andy Parsons, set up Innox Foundation as a charitable ‘vehicle’ for their family giving. Working alongside them are their son Daniel, who represents the younger generation of the family, and close family friend Tine Gregory, whose opinions and clear thinking we hold in great esteem. Our Foundation Director, Michael Fuller, has worked with us since 2020 and brings invaluable experience from his work across the non-profit sector over many years.
We all share a common desire to positively affect young adults’ mental health in whatever way we can – whether that is by supporting the work that others do or pioneering projects of our own in the future. We hope that our modest efforts can reap benefits that will improve the lives of a generation.
Jacqui has had a varied career in sales and communication, spanning three decades and three continents, with the common thread being a fascination with people. She set up Innox Foundation in 2019 having decided that her last career move would be into the world of philanthropy, where she hopes to be able to make a difference to the way young people experience life.
She is fiercely committed to the concept of ‘mental health’ as a positive term which she believes should be referred to as commonly as we do physical health. With 4 young adult children, she is acutely aware of the pressures affecting young people everywhere, along with the need for genuine connection which so many lack.
After almost 30 years working in the oil industry and an economist by training, Andy now divides his time between his fledgling investment business and Innox Foundation, where he provides a much needed sounding board to Jacquis’ ideas and enthusiasm.
Possessed of a keen analytical brain, along with a strong sense of justice and a desire for equality, Andy is very much the backbone that has allowed Innox Foundation to exist. He is married to Jacqui and father of their four young adult children.
Dan has first-hand experience of the hardship many young people experience at points of transition: at age 13, he left Singapore where he was born to live in the UK and faced head on the challenges that a new country, school, friendships and culture brings. He graduated in 2019 from Leeds University and is now pursuing a career in renewable energy, but retains a keen awareness of the struggles many of his generation face making their way in the world, particularly in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
Tine is Danish, has lived all over the world, and now resides back in Copenhagen. With an initial career in banking, some ten years ago Tine turned her considerable talents to the world of education and currently heads up the international section of a well known school in Denmark. Tine has direct personal experience of the crisis point which some young people reach, having tragically lost her oldest son to suicide earlier in 2020. She is as energetic and highly motivated about wanting to help young people who struggle with their mental health and brings invaluable experience gained from working within different international systems and cultures.
Michael has over 25 years’ experience in the non-profit sector, with a focus on children and young people. Following senior global roles at ActionAid International and Save the Children International, Michael helped establish and then led a grant-making organisation in London.
Michael now wears several hats. Alongside working for the Innox Foundation, he supports non-profits to help them set their direction, scale, innovate and improve their performance and impact. Michael brings his knowledge to make our funding as beneficial as possible for our partners.
Our Work
We are a young foundation and are cautious in our approach, conscious that we are learning all the time. Proud to have partnered with some outstanding organisations, we are confident there will soon be more to follow. Below are some examples of the charities and other non-profit organisations that we have supported thus far:
Great Friendship Project
The Great Friendship Project exists to tackle loneliness among young adults. Their team of volunteers organises a data-backed programme of community events such as social walks and pub quizzes across London to help young adults build connections and lasting friendships.
The social enterprise also runs national campaigns to normalise conversations about loneliness and encourage early intervention and peer support. Their connection building activities and campaigns are underpinned by research, with the organisation working with leading universities to deepen their understanding of loneliness and the impact of their work.
Youth Access
The charity performs two vital roles. They support hubs to improve the quality of their work through best practice guidance, sharing learning, peer support and training. They also champion hubs through policy, research and campaigns.
Sheffield Futures
From Star House, their city centre hub, and communities across Sheffield, the charity delivers social prescribing, counselling, structured wellbeing support, open access 1:1 wellbeing drop-ins, group Wellbeing Cafes, and wellbeing workshops.
Music Works
All of the charity’s programmes are grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a well-evidenced framework for improving wellbeing. They use music to naturally facilitate all three elements of SDT: autonomy, competence and connection. By doing to, young people build their agency, self-confidence and social network, helping them to go onto realise their full potential.
Trelya
The charity delivers three main programmes. Skylar provides intensive support for young parents and their young children. Gallos is a youth work programme featuring weekly mentoring and a programme of sports, creative, nature and education activities. Gul is an intensive six-month holistic employment programme for young adults who are furthest from the labour market.
WILD
WILD exists to give young parents and their babies a healthy start to family life. Set up in Cornwall in 1992 by a group of young parents, WILD has grown to become the largest UK charity focused on young parent families. WILD delivers a long term, whole-family service to improve young parent’s mental wellbeing and parenting skills.
The charity has created and leads a National Young Parent Network of charities who work to improve the lives of young parents. WILD are working with the network to share best practice and influence national policy so young parent families across the UK are better supported and have a fair start to family life.
Comics Youth
Comics Youth is a creative community organisation led by young people, for young people. Based in Merseyside, they exist to use the power of comics to empower young people to flourish from the margins of society. They focus on supporting those subjected to extreme marginalisation, including LGBTQIA young people, young people of colour and individuals experiencing chronic or terminal illness.
Comics Youth are the first organisation in the UK to offer comics-based literacy and wellbeing projects for young people. They offer a range of creative projects that bring young people together to connect, express themselves, learn new skills and have their voices heard. All of the Comics Youth team is made up of lived experience professionals who have faced similar marginalisation as the young people that they work with
Grow
Grow UK is a youth development charity that works with young adults across Sheffield. From their community farm on the edge of the city they run development programmes that combine coaching with nature-based projects to promote wellbeing, reduce isolation and boost employment prospects.
Their flagship programme, The Grow Programme, builds skills needed to thrive in life and at work and includes 1:1 and group sessions and work experience at their farm. Those on the programme have the opportunity to apply to be a trainee gardener at Grow Gardeners, their social enterprise that offers garden maintenance services in Sheffield.
The Warren
The Warren provides young people with a ‘360 degree’ offer to meet their multiple needs and interests. Their comprehensive range of services includes a welcoming café for young people to connect, 1:1 youth work, a walk-in counselling service, a state of-the-art digital hub, music projects from their recording studio, an employability and skills service and campaigning on issues that matter to young people.
MAP
MAP exists to help young people in Norfolk to ‘find their way’ and make a successful transition to adulthood. The charity takes a holistic approach, offering support on a range of issues, including mental and physical health, employment, money, housing, relationships and parenting. MAP offers this support through a range of advisory services, therapy and youth work.
Many of their services are provided ‘under one roof’ so young people are able to access different types of support in one place. A golden thread that runs through MAP is young people’s involvement in shaping their work and wider organisation. The charity reaches over 4,000 young people across Norfolk each year from their centres in Norwich and Great Yarmouth and outreach across the county.
Empire Fighting Chance
Empire Fighting Chance uses the power of boxing to fight the impact of inequality on young people’s lives. They have developed a ground-breaking approach for young people that combines non-contact boxing, psychology, and an unwavering commitment to be ‘in their corner’. Young people gain support to improve their mental health, behaviour and wider lives in ways that are natural, enjoyable and feel safe.
The charity has developed various programmes, including Box Therapy, which combines boxing with a therapeutic intervention delivered by a trained therapist. After proving the efficacy of their programmes in their home city of Bristol and nearby South Wales, the charity is scaling their work across the UK through a network of trained boxing clubs and other local organisations.
Odd Arts
Odd Arts uses theatre in three main ways. They deliver Therapeutic Theatre Workshops in which participants devise theatre from their own experiences to explore feelings and experiences in a safe space; secondly they run interactive theatre tours, giving audiences an opportunity to explore key common issues; and finally they use theatre for campaigning – running projects that allow young people to explore and speak out about inequality through film creation, theatre performance and visual art.
The Open Door
ODC’s flagship programme is Bazaar, run by young people for young people from ODC’s quirky ‘therapeutic sheds’; is an online creative therapeutic programme based on CBT. Their other work includes Project Oomoo, offering young people in care creative classes and peer support; Dazzle, a mindfulness programme delivered through Virtual Reality, and a rich programme of music events, festivals and exhibitions.
Nightline Association
Innox Foundation is providing the Nightline Association with funding to recruit its first CEO. This has the potential to have a transformative impact on the Nightline movement: the Nightline Association will be able to better support and promote Nightlines across the UK, and to establish additional Nightlines at higher education institutions. As a result, more students across the country will gain access to high quality emotional support.
The Cares Family
The Cares Family now delivers its programmes across London, Liverpool and Manchester. To achieve a wider impact, the organisation is using its expertise to support other charities, companies, local authorities and national government departments to improve connection and community. In 2018 The Cares Family successfully lobbied for and helped shape the UK’s (and world’s) first government loneliness strategy.
The Wave Project
The charity has accumulated considerable evidence to demonstrate that Surf Therapy achieves a number of positive changes for young people, including improved confidence, self-esteem, resilience, and social networks. The Wave now operates in multiple locations across the UK, including in Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Young Roots
The charity works in Croydon and Brent, providing young refugees and asylum seekers with a range of support, including youth and sporting activities; 1:1 intensive casework; legal and therapeutic support through specialist partners; and English-language mentoring. The charity is starting to use its grass roots experience to challenge broken policies and practices that have failed to support and protect young refugees.
Papyrus
PAPYRUS is the only national charity dedicated to the prevention of young suicide. They exist because suicide remains the single biggest killer of young people in the UK today. Set up in 1997 by bereaved parents, the charity equips young people and their communities with the skills to recognise and respond to suicidal behaviour. PAYRUS run a national helpline service, HOPELINEUK, which provides support and advice to young people struggling with thoughts of suicide and anyone worried about a young person.
Trained Suicide Prevention Advisers take calls, texts and emails from young people struggling with thoughts of suicide or who have already taken steps to end their life. Unlike most other helplines, the service is also available to anyone concerned about a young person, such as parents, teachers and friends. PAPYRUS also engages communities in suicide prevention projects, delivers suicide prevention training and uses campaigns to press for changes to policies that will help to prevent young suicide.
42nd Street
Based in Greater Manchester, 42nd Street is an innovative young people’s mental health charity with 40 years’ experience of providing free and confidential services to young people who are experiencing difficulties with their mental health and emotional wellbeing. The charity recognises that the mental health picture is a complex one: many young people feel disempowered, find services difficult to access and their situations are often compounded by health, social and economic inequalities.
42nd Street offers young people a wide choice of effective, creative projects and services to improve their mental health. These include in person and online one to one therapy, peer support groups (such as for women, LGBTQ+ young people, care leavers and young black men) and an inventive programme of photography, theatre, dance and music. 42nd Street’s outstanding work is not only achieving impact locally but also has national significance, offering ideas and inspiration to others across the country.
Youth Focus North East
Youth Focus North East has developed a strong interest and expertise in loneliness. As well as working to improve the youth sector’s response to loneliness and social isolation in the local area, the organisation is the lead partner of a national programme to build a bank of resources to help practitioners and young people to tackle this pressing issue. The Innox Foundation is supporting Youth Focus North East to embed these loneliness resources into its work with young people in Middlesbrough and Gateshead and that of the work of its partners.
Student Minds
Student Minds started in 2009 and has grown to become the UK’s largest student mental health charity. One in three students experience clinical levels of psychological distress whilst at university. COVID-19 has exacerbated issues, with students experiencing increased loneliness, struggles with finance and anxiety over their future. Student Minds focuses on providing preventative and early-intervention support to transform the state of student mental health.
The national charity empowers students to build their own ‘wellbeing kit’ through developing knowledge, confidence and skills to look after their mental health and support their peers. They do this through running workshops for young people and delivering digital projects, including the Student Minds Blog, an online community where students share their experiences to help their peers. The charity also supports higher education institutions and students’ unions to work collaboratively with their students to make mental health and wellbeing a whole-institution priority.
The Jo Cox Foundation
The Jo Cox Foundation was set up by friends and family of the late Member of Parliament Jo Cox, who was murdered in her constituency in 2016. They seek to continue the work around loneliness started by Jo Cox, striving to create compassionate, well connected communities where everyone has a sense of identity and belonging. Their key programmes include the Great Get Together campaign (their flagship community building event), the Great Winter Get Together (which shines a light on loneliness during the festive period) and More in Common Network (a collection of groups across the UK that are supported by the Jo Cox Foundation to bring their community together).
The Innox Foundation is supporting The Jo Cox Foundation to develop a Youth Loneliness Network, convening organisations interested in deepening their understanding of and capacity to tackle youth loneliness. The network aims to harness the expertise and collective power of its participating members to reduce loneliness among young people across the UK. Members will come together to learn from one another, develop expertise in youth loneliness and advocate for changes to reduce loneliness among young people.
1625 Independent People
1625 Independent People works with young people facing homelessness in Bristol, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset. The social enterprise supports some of the area’s most vulnerable 16 to 25 year olds, including care and custody leavers and unaccompanied asylum seekers. 1625 Independent People offer a range of services, including mediation and family work to prevent youth homelessness, accommodation support, education, employment and training and financial education.
Mental health is also a vital element of their work, not least because 42% of homeless young people have a diagnosed mental health condition. The Innox Foundation is supporting 1625 Independent People to improve and scale the mental health support that they provide to young people facing homelessness. The work will have a particular focus on peer led projects that bring young people together to overcome isolation and loneliness.
Bath Rugby Foundation
We are based in Bath and made a decision early in Innox Foundation’s history to support the amazing work that Bath Rugby Foundation do.
Every year they work with around 3,000 youngsters who’ve had the toughest start in life. Their programmes focus on key areas of need – education, inclusion and employability. The young people they work with are born into poverty, have a special educational need or disability, or are excluded because of their race or gender. Whilst their focus is clearly beyond a mental health one, their approach targets the whole person and mental well-being using the combined power of sport and education to motivate, raise self-esteem and increase confidence.
They deliver mental, social, physical, wellbeing and employment programmes, working with young people in their everyday environments – whether in the park, at school or in the street. Bath Rugby Foundation gets involved where the need is greatest, improving life skills using the values of teamwork, loyalty, discipline and respect.
MindApples
Mindapples believe that we need to build a popular culture of looking after our minds, just as we look after our bodies: if you can look after your body by going to the gym or eating an apple, what’s the equivalent for your mind? They are passionate about sharing their educational approach and about making understanding of mental health and wellbeing accessible to all.
They have developed digital versions of their learning materials, including an app which runs on IoS and Android. Innox Foundation is partnering with Mindapples as they trial their app in a university context; the aim is to offer much needed support to the UK’s student population by enabling them to manage their minds and better maintain good mental health as a result. This project will run through the academic year 2020/21 and a thorough evaluation of its impact will be conducted at the end of the project period.
Off The Record (OTR)
OTR is a mental health social movement by and for young people aged 11-25, living in Bristol and South Gloucestershire. OTR isn’t just a charity providing mental health services, it’s a mental health movement mobilised to support, promote and defend the mental health, rights and social position of young people.
How they do this is just as important as what they do: “We believe enabling young people starts with recognising their capabilities before their vulnerabilities, so our approach is fundamentally strengths based. We believe participatory services are more sustainable than transactional ones, so young people play a large and active role designing, delivering and communicating our work – not just consuming it.”
Body & Soul
Body & Soul have developed a weekly livestream service that is accessible to any young person in psychological distress; called MindSET, it delivers effective, concrete skills to help young people manage emotional distress, skills that are essential to Body & Soul’s members who are at risk of suicide and self-harm. Their therapeutic team help those in need acquire knowledge and skills quickly, enabling them to reduce and manage emotional distress and prevent harmful behaviours.
Whilst the grant from Innox Foundation is for core funding, we are particularly supportive of the need to expand the Mindset service so that any young person in need can have access to the invaluable support it offers.
Grants
We fund extraordinary organisations whose work improves the mental health of young adults. We do not run an open grant application process. Instead, we actively seek out organisations to support. However, if you meet our funding criteria and would like to tell us about your work, please complete our Contact Form.
OUR APPROACH
Who, what and how we fund is shaped by five guiding principles:
Partnership
We consider those that we fund to be partners in our joint mission to improve young adult’s mental health
Impact driven
We offer our partners long term, flexible funding so they are better placed to achieve their mission. We limit the time organisations spend on applications and reporting so they can stay focused on their work
Proactive
We actively look for organisations to become our partners
Trust
We trust our partners to spend our grant wisely, offering funding that can be used for what they consider to be most needed
Relationship-Based
We prioritise people and conversations over application forms and reports
- Operate in England, Scotland and Wales
- Support young adults aged 18 to 25
- Work to improve young people’s mental health
- Take an early intervention and/or preventative approach to improving mental health
- Enrich the voluntary sector either locally or nationally, such as through changing the way mental health is tackled, sharing valuable learning and influencing policy and practice
- Demonstrate outstanding qualities, including strong leadership, expertise in their field, quality work, a drive to achieve impact, collaborative approach and healthy finances
- Plan to grow their impact on young adult’s mental health and require support to do so
The Innox Foundation will not fund the following:
- Grants to individuals
- Work that does not have a direct benefit to young people
- Work that is the responsibility of the state
- The promotion of religion
- Activity that is not legally charitable
- Activity that involves breaking any UK laws
- Work that has already been delivered
- Work that benefits people outside of the UK.
We like to stay connected with our partners during the grant period so that we can find out more about their work and the issues that young people face. We take an informal, conversational approach which includes visits and meetings rather than formal reports.