Life-changing and Life-saving: The Women’s Urgent Support Fund
June 23, 2025Article by Rosie Learmonth, Programme Manager – Women’s Urgent Support Fund
The Smallwood Trust has long recognised the vital nature of women’s organisations and services. In particular, we understand the role they play in meeting the needs of women experiencing financial hardship and providing support and services that reduce gendered poverty. Alongside this, we grapple with the reality that funding for the women’s sector still does not reflect the value they provide for society.
Safeguarding the women’s sector is vital in keeping women out of poverty, preventing abuse and improving women’s confidence to participate fully within their community. In 2018, the Women’s Budget Group and the Women’s Resource Centre produced Life-Changing & Life-Saving: Funding for the women’s sector (2018), a report that made the case for specialist women’s organisations and illustrated the funding landscape for the sector at the time. The report highlighted the need for flexible, long-term funding opportunities that recognise the expertise and social value they hold.
In this article, we revisit the report to understand how the issues highlighted in 2018 remain present and have been exacerbated by a range of factors, including the cost of living crisis, which is still a daily reality for many women. We also reflect on how Smallwood’s Women’s Urgent Support Fund seeks to safeguard women’s organisations through this crisis by providing vital funding.
Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, the Women’s Urgent Support Fund (WUSF) has provided £5.4 million in emergency funding to frontline services supporting women most at risk of poverty, enabling organisations to respond to increased demand brought on by the cost of living crisis. Due to unprecedented demand for this funding, the Smallwood Board also invested an additional £450,000.
The WUSF and Smallwood funds have supported 102 organisations, all working across their own unique specialisms to meet the immediate and long-term needs of women who are most at risk of poverty during this crisis.
Much of what we have observed through planning and delivering the Women’s Urgent Support Fund is echoed in Life-Changing and Life-Saving, both in terms of common ongoing issues for the sector, and in the ways our grant partners harness funds to sustain or enhance their expertise during times of crisis.
This article seeks to highlight key links between research and grant-making practice that recognises specialist women’s organisations as life-changing and life-saving.
The challenge of funding cuts from statutory authorities
The report describes the breadth and depth of the women’s sector. Organisations offer services that range from improving employment and life skills to protecting women from escalating violence and saving them from “absolute destitution”.
At the time of publishing in 2018, the report highlighted a severe reduction in statutory funding since 2008 due to ongoing austerity measures, which had knock-on consequences for local government budgets. The report described how these cuts had two main consequences: reduced funding and increased demand.
While reviewing applications, we observed the ongoing and real-time impacts of these funding cuts and underinvestment. Many applicants to the Women’s Urgent Support Fund shared fears of imminent funding cuts of up to 50 percent from statutory bodies such as the local council and the local Police and Crime Commissioner. This meant that organisations were seeking funding from trusts and foundations like Smallwood to keep core services running and ensure they could continue supporting women with their basic needs. Uncertainty about the future was more pronounced and more immediate than ever before.
As a result, Smallwood observed extremely high levels of competition for the Women’s Urgent Support Fund. Across both rounds, we received just under 1,000 applications and were able to fund 102 organisations, resulting in an average success rate of 13 percent, which was transparently communicated at all stages. Whilst this does not diminish the impact the fund has had on the women’s sector, it reflects enduring systemic barriers to funding brought about by historical underinvestment and the diminishing social value attributed to women’s services.
More recently, research conducted by Rosa found that in 2021 a total of £4.1 billion worth of grants was awarded to charities, but the women’s sector received just 1.8 percent of this.
The challenge of securing core and flexible funding
In addition to ongoing funding challenges, the report highlights that a lack of funding to cover core costs and the demand from some funders for “innovative” projects stifles the women’s sector. The Women’s Urgent Support Fund sought to do the exact opposite by offering funding for existing services that were needed more than ever and were at risk of closing or diminishing without support. The fund was flexible and encompassed a wide range of costs that women’s organisations may need in order to protect frontline services and respond to the cost of living crisis.
Applying for core costs was encouraged at all points, including rent, salaries, equipment and utilities, to ensure the continued delivery of fundamental activities that support women in poverty.
The fund did not ask for innovation or reinvention but funded well-established service delivery rooted in the unique experience and specialism of each organisation. As the report notes, the type of services offered by women’s organisations vary, but all have the power to change and save lives. The expertise held by Smallwood’s grant partners – all of which are specialist women’s organisations or have dedicated women’s services – guides our funding programmes and the ethos that underpins the Women’s Urgent Support Fund.
The challenge of retaining staff
Core to the delivery of frontline services are experienced and trained staff who can respond swiftly and effectively in times of crisis. With a sharp rise in the cost of living, many organisations described how their staff were not immune to the crisis and were being forced to look elsewhere for higher-paid, long-term employment, as funding cuts and short-term contracts left skilled workers in precarious situations.
Not only does this mean organisations are at risk of losing skilled workers, it also impacts women’s ability to trust frontline services. This is particularly concerning when trust is integral to building relationships between support workers and women experiencing financial hardship. For example, the report notes that “support work is very intense and there is a very high level of trust at the core, as it’s the only way women will open up”. Smallwood’s grant partners echo this, noting the time it takes to build the necessary trust required to support women who approach their organisation. Consistent support from familiar faces is key to maintaining confidence.
The Women’s Urgent Support Fund played a key role in securing essential frontline roles. Funding was utilised in different ways depending on the needs of the organisation – to provide increased salaries in line with inflation, bring in additional staff to support with demand, and increase hours from part-time to full-time. For many organisations, funding for staff roles was coming to an end, and without it, vital services would either be significantly reduced or disappear entirely at a time when they are most needed. The fund therefore helped protect the skills of frontline workers and ensure high-quality service delivery.
Ideal funding scenario
The 2018 report makes recommendations around the ideal funding scenario for women’s organisations. Seven years on, these recommendations remain relevant to the women’s sector today.
The report states that long-term or unrestricted funding and support for specialist services are key to sustaining the sector. As the cost of living crisis continues, trusts and foundations play a key role in enabling the survival of the sector. In particular, funders should strive for long-term relationships with women’s organisations and design funds that contribute to their financial sustainability. Whilst the Women’s Urgent Support Fund included costs to strengthen organisational sustainability as well as to weather the immediate impacts of the crisis, we acknowledge that applicants often need to prioritise funding to plug gaps that are increasing and deepening.
Finally, the report notes that specialist organisations – which are “often small and local” – are usually best positioned to understand and respond to the needs of marginalised women, and must be recognised and adequately funded. To this end, across both rounds of the Women’s Urgent Support Fund, Smallwood committed to awarding at least 50 percent of grants to organisations led by and for women experiencing racial inequality and/or disabled women. Of the 102 organisations funded, 80 are led by women experiencing racial inequality and 40 are led by disabled women.
Whilst this goes some way to address the funding gap for services supporting some of the most marginalised women, we recognise that wider, lasting change is required across the UK. We encourage funders – including trusts and foundations and statutory bodies – to join Smallwood in recognising and investing in the life-saving and life-changing work of women’s organisations.
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
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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.
