GambleAware’s Community Resilience Fund: Year One Report

In 2022, GambleAware launched their £1.2 million Community Resilience Fund (CRF) to support disadvantaged communities at risk of gambling harms during the cost of living crisis.

The fund initially supported 21 community organisations from across the UK for 12 months.

How effective was the fund? This paper evaluates the first year of the programme.

The findings highlight the complexities involved in engaging with people about gambling harms, particularly when it comes to issues of stigma and shame. Successfully engaging local communities on the issue of gambling harms requires careful training for staff and volunteers, the building of trust between community members and staff, and tailored outreach activities.

Recommendations for future programmes to further develop early intervention support for at risk communities include:

• Co-designing services with other local services and service users
• Providing long-term funding to allow for project scoping and development to test assumptions
• Build in time to project budgets and resourcing plans for grantees to engage with evaluation and capacity-building activities

This publication was prepared by Ipsos and New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) as part of the evaluation and learning support for GambleAware’s Community Resilience Fund (CRF). The CRF has now been extended to 11 of the original organisations for a further 1-2 years.

Image: GambleAware’s Community Resilience Fund start–up event, Birmingham