Sunder Katwala, the Indian-origin director of the UK think tank British Future and one of Britain's most closely watched commentators on immigration and integration policy, has been appointed to the board of The National Lottery Community Fund — one of the country's largest bodies for distributing charitable grants to community projects across the UK.
The appointment was confirmed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which named Katwala alongside Michelle Mitchell OBE, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, as new Board Members for a four-year term running from 5 August 2026 to 4 August 2030. The two succeed Peter Stewart LVO and Stuart Hobley, who stepped down after completing their own four-year terms on the board.
Katwala has led British Future, an independent, non-partisan think tank and charity, for the past fifteen years. The organisation works on questions of identity, immigration and integration, aiming to build what it describes as confidence and common ground in a changing Britain — often through public attitudes research intended to inform debates that can otherwise seem polarised. Since May 2026, Katwala has also served as a Commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and he sits on the Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion.
His career spans publishing, journalism and policy research: he led the Fabian Society from 2003 to 2011, worked as a journalist at The Observer, directed research at the Foreign Policy Centre, and served as a Commissioning Editor at Macmillan. The government's official appointment notice records that neither Katwala nor Mitchell has declared any significant political activity connected to the roles. The National Lottery Community Fund's board oversees the strategy, performance and funding decisions of an organisation that channels proceeds from National Lottery ticket sales into local causes covering every postcode area of the UK. In the 2024/25 financial year alone, the Fund awarded more than 13,000 grants totalling over £790 million. Board members are expected to commit roughly 36 days a year to the role, for which they receive the standard public-appointment rate of £7,848 annually.
Announcing the appointments, the Fund's chair, Dame Julia Cleverdon, said the new members would bring particularly relevant skills to our task of investing in communities across the UK. Katwala and Mitchell join alongside a broader refresh of the board this cycle, which also brought in Accenture managing director Naomi Wass; Michael Madnick, chief executive of the US-based Mountain Philanthropy Partners; Anna Sedgley, a former chief finance officer at Dow Jones and Bauer Media; BBC Nations finance director Samantha Sing; BBC World Service English controller Jon Silkha; former Knight Foundation vice president for journalism Jim Brady; and Hannah Jones, formerly chief sustainability officer at Nike.
For Britain's Indian diaspora, Katwala's appointment adds a further, if quieter, marker of representation at the institutional level — not through elected office, but through governance of one of the country's most consequential funding bodies for grassroots and community organisations. His long-running work on integration and social cohesion, built through British Future, gives him a distinct vantage point on a board whose grants increasingly touch questions of community resilience, local identity and social infrastructure across a UK shaped by successive waves of migration.
The appointments took effect immediately upon announcement, with Katwala and Mitchell now working alongside the Fund's existing board members and its chief executive, David Knott, to oversee the delivery of grant funding through the current four-year cycle.
