£1.75m awarded through Women’s Urgent Support Fund Round 1
The Smallwood Trust has awarded £1.75 million in new grants to women’s organisations across England through Round 1 of the Women’s Urgent Support Fund. The Fund is supported by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK, to respond to the cost-of-living crisis.
Thanks to National Lottery players, 31 organisations will receive funding over three years to continue delivering vital frontline women’s services during the cost-of-living crisis. Funds will be used to respond to a spike in demand brought on by the crisis and will cover staff salaries, running costs and the provision of essential items for women at most risk of poverty.
We received a total of 475 applications, highlighting a drastic need for long-term funding during the cost-of-living-crisis, especially for organisations working with marginalised women. 58% of these applicants had an annual income of under £200k, the majority of whom were grassroots and community-led services. In line with the priorities for this Fund, 70% of applicants targeted women experiencing racial inequalities and a further 50% targeted disabled women.
Due to unprecedented demand, the Smallwood Board agreed to utilise £450k of Smallwood’s own endowment funds and a further £300k was brought forward from the Women’s Urgent Support Fund Round 2 in order to safeguard 11 additional organisations against closure or service cuts due to rising costs.
We will announce the full list of organsiations to receive funding soon and look forward to sharing how individual grants will be making a difference over the next three years!
About The National Lottery Community Fund
We are the largest non-statutory community funder in the UK – community is at the heart of our purpose, vision and name.
We support activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and that will strengthen society and improve lives across the UK.
We’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and to work closely with government to distribute vital grants and funding from key Government programmes and initiatives.
As well as responding to what communities tell us is important to them, our funding is focused on four key missions, supporting communities to:
- Come together
- Be environmentally sustainable
- Help children and young people thrive
- Enable people to live healthier lives.
Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, we distribute around £500 million a year through 10,000+ grants and plan to invest over £4 billion of funding into communities by 2030. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £47 billion has been raised and more than 670,000 individual grants have been made across the UK – the equivalent of around 240 National Lottery grants in every UK postcode district.
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About the Smallwood Trust
The Smallwood Trust has been helping women across the UK out of poverty for 136 years. Our programmes provide grant funding and support to enable women to become financially resilient and to ensure economic systems work for them rather than against them. Half of the UK population are women – therefore our approach not only matters for individual women, enabling them to thrive economically and overcome financially stressful events, it is also critical for the UK economy. While we will continue to meet the immediate needs of women facing financial insecurity, we will also increasingly focus on tackling the systems that cause gendered poverty.
