29 January 2025
Farewell to Mary Hancock: Celebrating 12 transformative years at Somerset Community Foundation
Mary Hancock, our Operations Director, is leaving Somerset Community Foundation after almost 12 years to join our colleagues at Devon Community Foundation as their new Chief Executive.
Mary has been at the heart of the Foundation during a crucial period of steady growth and expansion. When she joined there were just 3 members of staff and a funding programme of less than £500,000. As we draw to the end of another financial year, we are now a team of 18 delivering over £4 million of funding.
None of that would have been possible without Mary’s leadership on how we operate – how our systems and processes support our work, how we have supported a growing team and adapted to changing circumstances.
There are too many ways Mary has contributed to list them all here, but perhaps what stands out most are the 2 periods when we had to rapidly respond to new circumstances – the emergency appeal to the 2013 floods and the first Covid-19 lockdown. In both cases we had to radically and rapidly change the way we worked, virtually overnight. In both cases we did so successfully and in both cases that was in a very large part down to Mary’s calm leadership and management. Both episodes were ‘gamechangers’ for the Foundation.
One of Mary’s goals has been to make Somerset Community Foundation ‘a good place to be from’. I hope we are, and if we are, that is in no small measure Mary’s legacy to the Foundation.
– Justin Sargent, CEO.