Volunteer Development Officer
Reference: APR20246930
Location: Flexible in UK
Salary: £26,379.00 - £28,319.00 Per Annum, Pro Rata
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Part-time, 30 hours per week
Benefits: Pension Scheme, Life Assurance Scheme, 26 days' Annual Leave (pro rata)
Nature is in Crisis, and here at the RSPB we are working across the UK and overseas to save it. As the UK's largest nature conservation charity, with a workforce of over 14,000 employees and volunteers, we have an ambitious programme of work to revolutionise our volunteering approach and deepen the impact volunteers have as individuals and collectively.
The Volunteer Development Officer (Assemble) will work within the Volunteering Development Department to deliver the volunteering elements of our new corporate strategy, which has a focus on increasing people powered conservation, focussing on diversity and raising our internal people capabilities.
Assemble is our volunteering management system and this role will be the lead contact, champion and be the system expert from the RSPB business perspective (volunteering) for Assemble – ensuring volunteering and volunteers get the best from Assemble.
The Volunteering Development Department are the subject matter experts for volunteering and will drive the culture change needed to achieve the required change and growth in volunteers and volunteering delivering our ambitious strategy demands.
You can be based anywhere in the UK, and we are very supportive of flexible working. We value and understand the importance of different voices, experiences, perspectives and backgrounds within our workforce and strongly encourage applications from all sections of the community.
What's the role about?
The Volunteering Development Department are the subject matter experts for volunteering and will drive the culture change needed to achieve the required change and growth in volunteers and volunteering delivering our ambitious strategy demands.
As the Volunteer Management System (Assemble) lead, this role will:
- Proactively make changes to Assemble (through the System Administrator) as required to support, improve and develop business operations.
- Document RSPB Business processes linked to Assemble
- Assist in developing and delivering training and other resources such as promotional talks, intranet articles and team presentations, to promote uptake of the system and support users in getting the best from Assemble
- With the System Administrator (in our Digital team) ensure Assemble functionality (existing and new), work as required for users and the RSPB
- Provide excellent Customer Care and support to all Assemble Users resolving issues and challenges within our service level agreement.
- Ensure data and metrics from Assemble are available to meet business need, funding bid requirements and our annual reporting requirements internally and externally Identify and champion opportunities to get even more from Assemble to meet our volunteering strategy and improve and enhance our support for volunteers and the user experience on Assemble.
- This role would have an individual specialism but with the ability to be flexible to cover the priorities required across the department and the UK wide needs.
Essential skills, knowledge and experience:
- Comprehensive understanding and knowledge of volunteering innovation, best practice and sector standards.
- Demonstrable track record of having successfully and effectively developed a range of volunteering roles and schemes across an organisation.
- Experience of providing operational advice and guidance on volunteer involvement to people at all levels and building effective stakeholder relationships.
- Experience of working in a customer-focused environment.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, successfully influencing, persuading, guiding, listening to, and negotiating with others, constructively challenging thinking where appropriate.
- Strong skills in identifying and analysing problems, issues and areas of improvement, working collaboratively to develop creative strategies and solutions.
- Ability to be proactive, use initiative and work independently.
- Excellent planning and organisational skills; ability to manage and deliver a diverse portfolio of work and to balance the priorities and needs of multiple stakeholders.
Closing date: 23:59, Friday 24th May 2024
We are looking to conduct interviews for this position from week commencing 10th June 2024.
Interested?
If you would like to find out more, please click the apply button. You will be directed to our website to complete your application for this position.
We are committed to developing an inclusive and diverse RSPB, in which everyone feels supported, valued, and able to be their full selves. To achieve our vision of creating a world richer in nature, we need more people, and more diverse people, on nature’s side. People of colour and disabled people are currently underrepresented across the environment, climate, sustainability, and conservation sector. If you identify as a person of colour and/or disabled, we are particularly interested in receiving your application.
The RSPB is an equal opportunities employer. This role is covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.
The RSPB is a licenced sponsor. This role is not eligible for UK Visa Sponsorship - the successful applicant will need to have a pre-existing Right to Work in the UK in order to be offered an employment contract.
As part of this application process you will be asked to complete an application form including evidence on how you meet the skills, knowledge, and experience listed above. Contact us to discuss any additional support you may need to complete your application.
No agencies please.
About us:
The Humane League UK is a charity ending the abuse of animals raised for food by influencing the policies of the world's biggest companies, demanding legislation, and empowering others to take action.
We're a mission-driven, energetic team focused on problem-solving and effective teamwork, and have grown significantly over the last few years.
Thanks to our effectiveness, The Humane League has been named Top Charity by the independent evaluator Animal Charity Evaluators for every rating period since 2012.
THL UK is an equal-opportunity employer. We are committed to furthering equity and inclusion, and we value diversity. We seek people from a wide range of backgrounds who will bring a fresh perspective to the team, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger.
We make employment decisions by matching our organisational needs with the skills and experience of candidates, irrespective of race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, neurodiversity, age, or veteran status.
We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer, demonstrating our commitment to recruiting, retaining, and supporting disabled people and people with health conditions, based on their skills and talent.
You can read more about how The Humane League UK is working on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on our website.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding accessibility, please contact us via our website and we will be happy to discuss, via email or telephone, reasonable adjustments that you may require throughout the process.
The position:
We are seeking a creative, collaborative and effective fundraiser to drive long-lasting improvements for millions of farmed animals.
This is an exciting time to join a growing organisation, with ambitious plans to become more self-sufficient and financially stable for the long-term. You can be part of our Development Team helping to make this happen.
You’ll manage a portfolio of donors, have the opportunity to develop new relationships and shape our income now, and for the future.
By raising valuable funds and securing major gifts from high net worth individuals, you can make sure that our work continues to have long-lasting impacts - ending cages for egg-laying hens, convincing corporates to commit to improving chicken welfare in their supply chains, challenging the Government over the use of fast-growing breeds of chicken, and working to secure the first legislation to protect farmed fishes.
Through your work you will also have the opportunity to educate and inform our supporters, connecting them to our cause and creating greater awareness about the suffering of farmed animals.
If you would like to learn more about the Major Gifts Fundraiser role, you can watch a recording of our recent webinar by following the Apply button.
Hours:
This is a full time position of 37.5 hours per week over Monday to Friday.
From 1st July 2024 we are piloting a four day working week across the whole of the UK organisation. This pilot is planned to run for 12 months, at which point a decision will be made by our Board of Trustees as to whether this will become permanent. Success of the trial relies on the organisation being able to achieve the same or improved level of impact in four working days as five, with staff experiencing either the same or improved levels of wellbeing.
During the four day week pilot, working hours for this position will be reduced to 30 hours per week, spanning Monday to Thursday, with no reduction in salary. This will be a temporary change to the contractual terms with the successful candidate. The appointed person must be prepared to increase their working hours to 37.5 hours per week if a return to a five-day working week is decided.
Who you are:
We are looking for someone who can, through compelling and inspiring writing and communication, engage donors and potential funders in a variety of different formats, whether that’s email updates, thanking them for their support, or drafting a funding proposal. Ultimately, you will need to be able to bring them closer to our work, so that they can understand their individual contribution and the impact their donations can have, and are more likely to take action as a result.
You will also need to be able to build strong relationships, with the ability to understand the motivations of our donors, demonstrate the impact of our work, spot opportunities to engage them, and ask for their financial support at the right time.
Many of our donors come from the Effective Altruism (EA) community, so having an understanding of this community and how to engage it will be helpful. You will help to grow our supporters within the space, raising our profile and spotting opportunities to develop relationships with prospective new donors and funders.
Home-based, you will enjoy collaborating and working independently. As a self-starter, you are able to work autonomously and use your initiative to solve problems and see projects through from start-to-end. You’ll thrive on a varied and interesting mix of tasks and projects.
You’ll keep good records and understand the importance of clean and up to date supporter and donation data in creating efficient systems and processes.
We foster an environment of feedback, development and learning at THL UK. You’ll be someone that values receiving feedback, is able to assess your own performance, and has a desire to want to learn, develop and improve as an individual.
Prior experience of major donor fundraising is beneficial, whilst knowledge and understanding of trusts and grants fundraising would also be helpful. However, we are also keen to hear from you if you have relevant transferable skills and are looking to transition into this exciting area.
We’re looking for the right person, committed to the work we do at THL UK, with values that align with our own, and with the right skills and attitude - an exceptional and confident relationship builder and strong communicator.
We will provide relevant learning and development opportunities, tailored to your experience and personal needs, which could include in-house training, external training and fundraising events and conferences.
Be part of our mission to end the abuse of animals raised for food.
Primary Duties:
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Thanking and stewarding some of our key major donors - acting as a direct point of contact for their queries and questions, keeping them updated with our work, thanking them for their support and donations, building strong, long-term relationships, and developing them as prospects or donors to elicit further gifts, through regular email, telephone and face-to-face contact, thank you cards, networking, written updates, online and face-to-face meetings, and other feedback as appropriate.
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Creating and submitting funding asks to secure funding and achieve your own fundraising targets and those of the wider organisation, with a focus on securing multi-year funding. This will include creating cases for support and funding briefs for specific projects, working with the Programs Team to pull together all relevant information, as well as completing bespoke funding proposals. You will also need to be able to identify opportunities, know when is the right time to make an ask and what type of ask it should be, whether a one-off gift, multi-year funding, unrestricted or for a specific project, or match funding to help leverage a specific campaign or appeal.
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Coordinating our funding pipeline - managing and monitoring what stages our major givers are at in their cultivation journey, tracking details of funding applications/asks made, managing deadlines for applications and monitoring reports, tracking and reconciling donations and providing receipts, securing relevant funding agreements, and capturing the motivations, giving history and details of interactions of our donors.
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Leading on the development of our quarterly newsletter - a document designed as a key engagement tool specifically for our major gifts audience, to keep them up to date on our latest news, victories and forthcoming plans.
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Mapping out and developing our major donor programme for the next twelve months and beyond - planning a calendar of content and touch points to further cultivate and steward our key donors, such as exclusive webinars, networking meet-ups or larger fundraising events.
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Coordinating the major donor version of our annual supporter survey - collaborating with colleagues to align this to our general supporter survey, targeting questions with a major donor audience in mind, collating and analysing responses, and using them to inform and develop our major donor programme.
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Hosting donors at events - inviting them to protests and other events, such as our legal challenge against the use of Frankenchickens, and making sure they are well looked after.
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Prospect research - identifying, researching and assessing potential new major gifts prospects, and then developing cultivation plans for further engagement.
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Supporting the Head of Development with our trust and grant fundraising. This could include collaborating with consultants to complete prospect research and applications, creating and submitting low-level funding bids, and working with colleagues from across the organisation, to coordinate the submission of monitoring reports for our funders.
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Helping drive understanding of and engagement with fundraising across the organisation, with staff, volunteers and trustees - giving presentations, leading workshops with other departments, engaging staff, volunteers and trustees in the thanking process (i.e. getting them to send thank you cards to donors), and regularly updating the wider team on fundraising progress.
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Supporting other fundraising campaigns and initiatives, such as our end of year appeal, working with your colleagues in the Development Team to help find match funders from our pool of our major givers.
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Attending relevant events and conferences, to meet and cultivate prospective new funders and steward existing donors, develop learning and understanding, network with your fundraising peers, keep up to date with the fundraising sector and look for opportunities to raise our profile amongst funders and donors within the EA community.
In addition:
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Participating in team meetings including note-taking and facilitation.
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Attending in-person team workshops several times a year.
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Helping us make THL UK an inclusive workplace where employees and supporters are proud to be members of the movement.
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Demonstrating commitment to creating a stronger and more effective animal protection movement through inclusion and belonging, recognising the need for all of us to do better for social justice on a personal and organisational level.
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Helping us galvanise further support by lending your organisational skills to fundraising events and supporting our Managing Director and Head of Development by planning meetings and events.
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Performing any other duties assigned by the Head of Development.
For full details of the role, including the key competencies we see as the the most important requirements for being successful in this position, please visit our website by following the 'Apply via Website' button.
Good to know:
You will have access to:
- A fully remote work environment and team (all equipment is provided)
- A 4 day working week (note: this is a year long pilot until July 2025 when its continuation will be assessed)
- A pro rata share of 25 days leave plus Public Holidays (reduced proportionately during four day week trial)
- Flexible working hours
- A workplace pension
- An annual learning and development budget
- Support for mental and physical wellbeing
- £25 per month reimbursement towards home working costs
At The Humane League UK, animal welfare is at the forefront of our everyday work and as such, many of our employees are vegan by personal choice. All of our events and workshops offer only plant-based meals. We welcome all mission-aligned candidates to apply, no matter where you are in your journey to end the abuse of animals raised for food.
We are looking to speak to a wide range of candidates with diverse backgrounds - #NonGraduatesWelcome
Our employees all work remotely but still enjoy a supportive, collaborative environment.
For our salaries to be fair, transparent and equitable we want to provide a system that delivers a competitive salary in the market and could eliminate potential biases in compensation (such as the gender pay gap). For more information about the Major Gifts Fundraiser salary please the attached document.
All applicants need to be:
- Fluent in written and spoken English.
- Live and have the right to work in the UK (we are unable to consider applications from those without the right to work in the UK).
- Committed to our mission to end the abuse of animals raised for food.
The Process:
All applicants will be contacted within one week of the closing date to let you know if you have been successful in reaching the next stage.
Our full interview process comprises of the following stages:
- A skills test to give us an opportunity to see your skills in action (completed remotely).
- Join an online interview (via video call) so we can learn more about each other.
- Final Interview (via video call as above)
For full details of our recruitment process please see the attached document.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.