Savers Support Fund

This project started in February 2017 and ended in December 2019

Page last updated: 29 September 2020

Funding applications - Closed

The Savers Support Fund scaled social action programmes that improved money management skills and reduced debt for individuals and families in England.

The fund was a partnership between Nesta and the Office for Civil Society at DCMS, and was run alongside other grant programmes in our Government Innovation - People Power portfolio.

Why did we do this?

In the UK, millions of people live in debt. When the fund was launched in 2017, each citizen owed an average of £3,730 (excluding mortgages) and more than 16 million had less than £100 in savings - far too little to cope with the potential 'shocks' of unexpected expenditure or job loss.

This is an area in which social action is well placed to assist; with skilled volunteers able to help local people with the support, knowledge and tools they need to save for the future and become debt free. Giving people the skills to better plan and manage their finances can help them avoid debt and balance their budgets.

People powered approaches to financial well-being are not intended as a panacea for financial inequality and poverty, however, utilising the time and talents of citizens to provide both formal and informal help to others can shift power structures, increase the value of relationships, and ultimately lead to better outcomes for all.

What did we do?

We supported five organisations seeking to scale social action approaches to improve money management skills and reduce debt for individuals and families in England.

Across the fund, almost 9,000 people were supported to take action to improve their financial wellbeing.

A selection of impacts for each organisation were as follows:

Christians Against Poverty run The Life Skills course which is delivered alongside support from coaches and the community. The aim is to equip people with tools and skills to budget and manage competing household needs and how to think through relationships and form positive habits.

They scaled from 64 to 140 locations in England, supporting over 1,000 people.

Purple Shoots Self Reliant Groups (SRGs) are small groups of people who come from a shared economic and/or social background to support each other and develop friendships. In turn, they develop skills, save money and many start a small business which helps them to earn an income.

They established 25 SRGs in Bristol and Gloucester.

Toynbee Halls' The Community Money Mentors teaches local volunteers key money management skills and supports them to share the information within their communities.

They reached over 5,000 people who have benefited from developing their financial knowledge.

Your Own Place's Volunteer Tenancy Mentoring programme matches young people aged 16-25 (primarily care leavers) with trained mentors from the local community and local businesses.

They matched 70 young people to a mentor in Norfolk.

OnSide Youth Zones' Able To Manage programme, is a money management programme for young people delivered 1:1 by mentors to improve confidence, financial resilience and knowledge of money.

They recruited and trained 336 volunteer mentors across 9 different youth zones.

What did we learn?

Find out what we learned while running the programme:

Based on the learning of these innovations, we have collated 5 key lessons from their experimentation that should be used by others designing approaches to aid economic recovery from the effects of COVID-19.
The Self-Reliant Groups (SRG) movement is one of the most exciting, asset based programmes that has emerged in the community development sector in the past few years and has the potential to radically improve the lives of many more people and move them from a life of poverty to a life full of possibilities. We have identified three lessons for transforming the SRG practice.
You can read more about the impact of the work in our report on Evaluating Social Innovation to Create Lasting Change.
Read our People Power Shift report: What next for people power in public services? How compassion, connection and our collective power can take forward the next stage of people-powered public services.
Read The Value of People Power report that includes an economic analysis of the value of people power and explores how public services can better value the contribution of citizens.