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Disruption Awards 2024

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 2024, with a grant of up to £10,000.

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.

Stage one involves the completion of the attached form by 23 September 2024.

Stage one applications will be reviewed by a panel of Trustees, supported by our Advisor, Sonia Mangan. You will be informed of the outcome of your stage one application by 15th October 2024.

In stage two, applicants will be contacted by our Trust Advisor and/or a Trustee, to discuss their proposal. The focus of stage two is to ensure we have understood your project ambitions fully. Following the stage two discussion, funding recommendations will be made to the Trust Board. Trustees will determine the final successful projects at their meeting on 18th November 2024, with applicants being informed and funds being made available shortly thereafter.

If you have any queries, please feel free to email adviso r@dementiatrust.org

Successful applicants will be required to submit short reports during the project and provide a final report (around 2000 words plus photographs or videos) that will go on the Trust website. Further guidance on the reporting requirements will be given to applicants on award.

The Disruption Award application process has two stages.

Application process summary

Stage one:
The closing date for stage one is 23 September 2024

Please email completed stage one forms to advisor@dementiatrust.org

Stage one outcomes communicated by 15th October 2024

Stage Two:

Discussions: During 21st October – 30th October 2024

Outcome Communication: 19th November 2024

If you have any queries regarding the application process, please contact advsior@dementiatrust.org

More questions? Check out our FAQs section below.

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 him.
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
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.