The National Lottery Community Fund’s CEO Dawn Austwick has announced in her latest statement that since March, the organisation has distributed over £500m of National Lottery and funding from the government to support communities across the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Austwick, who has been the CEO of The National Lottery Community Fund since the end of 2013, also confirmed that the organisation has been operating at twice its usual rate since March, with over 14,500 grants being issued in that period.
She said: “In Northern Ireland, we have run two rounds of emergency government funding, in Scotland, we have worked in partnership with other funders to develop and deliver the Scottish Government’s emergency response funding and in England, we have been distributing emergency funding from government through the Coronavirus Community Support Fund (CCSF).
“In Wales, we have been at the forefront of supporting communities to respond to the challenges of the pandemic through working in collaboration with the Wales Funders Forum to maximise the impact of National Lottery funding. The funding has enabled a richness of practice, innovation and partnership across communities that has been awesome – from the very local right through to the national.”
Austwick went on to express her pride at the launch of the Phoenix Fund in partnership with the Global Fund for Children using National Lottery money, a programme that is co-designed and co-produced with practitioners from the BAME community. 18% of CCSF funding has gone to organisations specifically supporting Black and Minority Ethnic communities.
The organisation’s CEO also stated it has also continued to run its strategic funding programmes like the Climate Action Fund, as well as supporting others to help think about the future with its Emerging Futures Fund, and it continues its commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.
Austwick will be stepping down after seven years as the organisation’s CEO at the end of the year. Her full November statement can be read here.