source: National Memorial Family Fund

published: 2 August 2025

Image Credit: Michelle Kelly from www.afcscic.org

In September 2025 the National Mikey Powell Memorial Family Fund (NMPMFF) will be proudly marking 10 years since its inception. On 7 September 2015, the twelfth anniversary of the death of Mikey Powell who was killed in the custody of West Midlands Police, campaigning news group 4WardEverUK, launched the National Family Fund Appeal.

The Fund was developed and constituted in conjunction with the Friends of Mikey Powell Campaign, The United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC) and Migrant Media.

In May and June 2020, triggered by the controversial police killing of George Floyd, subsequent international protests, a tweet from Oonagh Ryder and further follow-up tweets by Lucy Brisbane McKay (@lucybrisbane) and others, we received over 900 single donations, and our monthly donors increased from a few dozen to over 100.

What have we been up to!

In June 2020 we announced that after 5 years of fundraising, the first ever NMPMFF grant round opened for applications from affected families. Since then we have administered well over £64,000 in grants across the Family and Holiday, Crisis and UFFC Legacy Fund grant programmes.

From July 2020 we became formally incubated by West Midlands based social enterprise Catalyst 4 Change, thereby taking on its legal identity but maintaining our operational independence.

We have also been financially supported by The Edge Fund, Black Lives Matter UK, INQUEST and a number of smaller donors (Timespan, LV Insurance Services, Sony Music, Naphtali Associates etc), to fund our staffing and media costs, organisational development, and delivery of family social/support and awards events that were held in several cities across the United Kingdom.

For more details see dedicated pages:

Historic Moments >

Featured Events >

We have produced two comprehensive annual reports demonstrating how our funding and donations were utilised and which also included short and long term development and fundraising strategies and challenges.

In June 2025 we were pleased to announce that the National Lottery Community Fund (Awards for All) awarded £19,984 in grant funding to the NMPMFF to further the commitments from our Development Plans. The funding will be used to support NMPMFF's short-term sessional staffing costs, organising two national family support events over 12 months, and to offer personalised therapeutic interventions for families members before they enter crisis - this includes specific support for children, especially those who have lost one or more of their parents or carers.

However, we still face significant challenges!

Over the last 2+ years the NMPMFF has lost 80+ (60%) of our regular monthly donors leaving our grant reserves almost depleted. Also, in 2023 our core 2-year funding came to an end, seeing the loss of two of our key development and engagement staff members.

We are now being supported by Catalyst 4 Change to address this situation through a dedicated fundraiser, and will continue publicising the need to raise funds via our new MemberBASE and Easyfundraiser platforms.

We remain positive about the future development of our key programmes, and believe that the NMPMFF will only go from strength to strength.

One of the families we supported very recently said;

"I have been deeply touched by the support and generosity of you all. The grant really helped us to have a place of safety to retreat to at times when the inquest process became too much.

"On behalf of all of our family we thank you all sincerely. Please know that in the memory of Mikey Powell you are touching lives."