vCashpoint

What it was

vCashpoint (also written Cashpoint, and in its first year vcashpoint) was the vInspired charity’s small grants scheme for young people who wanted to run a community project of their own rather than join somebody else’s. It launched on 1 June 2008, the first day of Volunteers’ Week, with grants of up to £2,500 for 16 to 25 year olds in England. The v20 youth advisory board’s first task was to help shape it.

In later years the grants were up to £500, open to 14 to 25 year olds, and a funded project could count towards a vInspired award and Duke of Edinburgh’s Award volunteering hours. There were themed rounds: one in 2010 for projects inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, across sport, health, culture, education and the environment; a Get Active For Good strand for local sports projects, which Sport England singled out in 2016; and NCS Cashpoint, for young people who had finished the National Citizen Service and wanted to keep going. In Scotland, a partnership with Young Scot gave applicants 250 Young Scot points for a successful application and up to 5,000 on completing the project.

The rule that never changed: the young person ran the project themselves. vCashpoint paid for it; it did not do it for them.

What it did

The charity’s own posts show the range: a young person selling community-made products, a work experience website, a youth newspaper, a “trash to flash” fashion project funded during the Get Trashed campaign.

From the archive

• Make your own opportunity with vInspired Cashpoint
• Three amazing Cashpoint projects you could start with £500
• Five winning formulas for vInspired Cashpoint funded projects
• vInspired Cashpoint teams up with Young Scot to offer points for projects
• Six ways to continue social action with NCS Cashpoint

Coverage

• Third Sector, 29 May 2008: New youth advisory board for v, on the launch of the grants and the board’s first task
• On The Wight, 13 April 2010: Grants for Olympic and Paralympic Games projects
• Sport England, 1 December 2016: New volunteering strategy published, which praised the Get Active For Good Cashpoint project
• Voice magazine’s Gold Arts Award hub still recommends vCashpoint for arts projects with community benefit, and London Volunteering Network’s signposts still describe it

What happened

vCashpoint closed with the charity in November 2018. Several websites still send young people here for a grant, which is why this page exists. The money is gone; the idea is not. Other funders make small grants to young people’s projects today, and Vinspired can help a funded project find its volunteers and record what it achieved.