HOW TO APPLY

Disruption AwardS 2025

Our vision is a world where people with dementia and their carers thrive, supported by innovative solutions and empowered by our grants and dedicated support to make meaningful change happen.

The Dementia Trust Disruption Awards are an opportunity for individuals, groups or organisations to make a difference for and with people with dementia that could have local, national or international impact. 

After funding successful projects in previous years Trustees of the Dementia Trust (DT) are looking for new projects to support in 2025, with a grant of up to £15,000.

This year we are aiming to support 2-3 organisations, partnerships, or projects. We encourage you to consider creative and impactful projects. We are always looking for ideas that can disrupt or diversify thinking, engage the public imagination and attract funders so that we can give out more funds to individuals and groups in future awards.

You can find out more about the Trust and its work to support people with dementia and their carers on the Trust website.

Please note this is NOT a research award, but applicants will be required to evaluate what difference the funding has made either through measurement of the project outcomes, user satisfaction surveys, and/or self-assessment.

How the two‑stage process works

  1. Stage 1 – Short online form
    Submit by 9 July and tell us who you are, what you hope to change and why it matters.

  2. Stage 2 – Friendly conversation (Invite only)
    Short‑listed applicants chat with a Trustee and our Advisor to explore ambition, feasibility and fit. No extra paperwork.

Trustees then make the final decision. Successful projects usually start within six weeks.

How the process works

What support comes with your grant?

  • A named Dementia Trust Advisor for troubleshooting and networking

  • Peer‑learning huddles with fellow awardees

  • Storytelling and communications boosts via our channels

  • Light‑touch guidance on evaluation and Creative Commons licensing

Ownership & sharing

Award‑holders keep full intellectual property rights to everything they create with the grant. Dementia Trust simply asks for a non‑exclusive, royalty‑free licence to share and showcase your work, so others can learn from it.

Wherever possible, we encourage open licences such as CC‑BY so your ideas can travel further.

Ready to start something?

Deadline for Stage 1 applications: 9 July 2025

Disruption Awards FAQs

  • The Trust is looking for anything that will disrupt the ideas that people have about people affected by dementia, including their carers and people who work with them. 

  • If you look at the website, you will see that previous awards have been given to organisations, individuals, and charities.  Awards are not given for research. You will have to provide some basic information on the application form.

  • Yes

  • What are Disruption Awards?

  • You will only know if your idea is disruptive after looking round to see if anyone else is doing the same thing. Be ambitious and look at projects in other places.

    We encourage you to consider creative and impactful projects. We are always looking for ideas that can disrupt or diversify thinking, engage the public imagination and attract funders so that we can give out more funds to individuals and groups in future awards.

  • If your existing project is very innovative and you want to do something that goes beyond that level, the Trustees will certainly be interested.

  • If you look at the previous projects, you will see that some were funded to completion and others were given initial funding.

  • Previous projects have been awarded to individuals. If you are applying as a charity, you will need to be registered. If the application is from a partnership the Trustees will require details of the lead partner and may ask to see a partnership agreement. The Trustees require individuals to provide references in support of the application.

  • You cannot apply for pure research, but Trustees will be very interested in new ideas that haven’t been tried before which help us discover new things about Dementia.

  • If you are applying as a charity, you will need to be registered.

  • No.

  • Yes, you can!

  • Only one application per organisation is allowed for each funding tranche. 

  • All applications must be submitted via the form (.docx) on our website.

  • Please stay as close to the word count as you can.  However, you will not be excluded if you go over by a small number of words (as a guide this could be anything up to 10% of the word count).

  • You may do this if your updated or new application is received by the deadline.

  • Please contact Advisor@dementiatrust.org to discuss what may have changed from your previous thinking, project or idea.

  • Yes, but consider whether your project for this tranche is sufficiently different to your previous project.

Can’t find an answer to your question?

Disruption news