The Youth Endowment Fund  

Head of Evaluation and Partnerships (Targeted Projects) 

Reports to:  Director of Impact

Salary:  £60,000 

Location: Central London 

About the Youth Endowment Fund 

The Youth Endowment Fund exists to prevent young people and children from becoming involved in violence.  

In recent years there has been a significant increase in violent crime. Homicides, assaults, robberies and offences involving weapons have all seen sustained growth. For children and young people, there have been particularly large increases in those who are both the perpetrators and victims of offences involving knives. This is a tragedy. Every child captured in these numbers is an important member of our community and society has a duty to protect them. 

The Youth Endowment Fund is a charity with a £200m endowment and a mission that matters. Founded by youth charity Impetus and its partners, we exist to prevent children and young people from getting caught up in violent crime. Many organisations have this calling. Our unique role is to identify what works best and spread the good news. We do this by finding the very best ways to prevent youth violence, funding great initiatives and working to scale them up and spread great ideas. 

At the heart of this is cutting-edge evaluation. Our mission is to find what works and then build a movement to put this into practice. That means that we are building a team that includes people who are brilliant evaluators and people who are brilliant at winning people over. In this role, we are looking for someone who is brilliant at both. This makes this a unique role – perfect for the right person. 

We’ll fund great initiatives in three ways: 

• Theme rounds. We’ll focus much of our funding on a series of themed rounds, one or two at any one time. 

• Place-based. We’ll focus on specific areas where violent crime is high. We’ll build partnerships with local people and organisations through our Neighbourhood Fund to create and test approaches aimed at addressing local challenges. And we’ll help local agencies to share power and information, through a dedicated Agency Collaboration Fund. 

• Targeted projects. If we identify programmes that don’t fit into the themed rounds or place-based funding but are widely used or promising with the potential to scale, we will provide the resources to fund, evaluate and learn from them. 

You will lead on our targeted projects work. This is likely to involve the design and delivery of strategically important and/or large-scale and innovative projects working with key partners and government. We estimate projects in this pipeline will be worth at least c.£10m a year. 

Key responsibilities 

You will be responsible for overseeing our targeted projects programme to identify and scale interventions and approaches that could make a significant dent in the problem of youth violence. You will have two main areas of responsibility: 

1. Designing, commissioning and managing complex and rigorous impact evaluations with experts in the field. You will:

• Make sure we maximise what we can learn from all targeted projects.

• Lead the design and delivery of our targeted projects evaluation work to ensure it produces quality learning about what works to prevent youth violence, including:

• Tendering evaluations;

• Assessing the feasibility, technical quality and deliverability of applications; 

• Make expert recommendations on which opportunities we pursue.

• Making appointments;

• Providing ongoing monitoring and quality assurance;

• Ensuring projects are delivered on time, on budget and to the highest quality. 

• Overseeing the publication of all reports. 

• Work with our wider evaluation team to ensure the approach is consistent with YEF’s overall evaluation strategy.

• Attend leadership meetings and governance meetings, making sure we make the best decisions as a Fund. 

• Make sure the evidence we produce is communicated in a clear and accessible way which will drive sustainable change. This is critical to everything we do at the Youth Endowment Fund.  

1. Identifying, building and managing great partnerships. You will:  

• Identify programmes or approaches that are either common and widely used to prevent children becoming involved in violence, or which are promising with the potential to scale.

• Build and nurture strong relationships with the organisations developing and delivering these programmes and approaches across England and Wales, making sure they are ready to apply for our funding. 

• Make sure we choose the best organisations to work with which give us the greatest opportunity to learn and make change happen whilst maximising match funding.

• Provide ongoing management and support to funded partners and evaluators, ensuring targeted projects are delivered to the highest standards and generate valuable evidence. 

• Support YEF’s supplementary funding targets by ensuring targeted projects brings in at least £6M a year in match funding.

About you 

You are this sort of person: 

• You are committed to tackling youth crime:You are passionate about the impact prevention and early intervention has. You don't want your days to pass without making a difference.

• You are experienced in evaluation and research: You have at least 5 years’ experience working in a senior research and evidence role in a related sector and a strong knowledge and technical expertise in evaluation methodologies. This includes the ability to critically appraise the design of more than one area of evaluation (e.g. randomised control trials, quasi experimental designs, evaluations of public health approaches, evaluations of complex multi-component evaluations, etc).You have significant experience of carrying out or commissioning large scale research and evaluation and have experience carrying out applied research methods including both quantitative and qualitative approaches. 

• You have a post-graduate (Masters or PhD) qualification. This is in a relevant field such social science, social policy, public health, health services or other field, with a significant quantitative component, or relevant experience equivalent to a Masters qualification. 
   

• You are experienced in building partnerships. You have significant experience in building partnerships and can show how these have been effective in delivering change. Ideally these partnerships will have involved securing funding, either through cash or in kind support.

• You win people over. People tend to warm to you and respect you. You have built good relationships with very senior people and with very junior people. You are comfortable talking to a Secretary of State, a youth worker, a company CEO, a teacher and a 15 year-old student. Listening to people from all backgrounds matters to you.

• You learn fast but remain humble. You are very quick at getting your head around things. You like learning. You are very good at synthesising information. You know how much you don't know. You know that you can learn more. You know that it's easy to assume you know when you don't. You care more that good things happen than who gets the credit. You are a great and supportive team player. 

• You are happy to help out where needed:You understand that working in a new organisation, leading on a new piece of work, sometimes means helping out with wherever it is needed.

• You really know what makes great research and quality evidence:  You can design and draft high-quality research proposals including the sample, measurement and analysis. You are confident in assessing the quality of evidence that underpins interventions and can guide decisions on grant applications.

• You are an excellent communicator:  You can produce technical documents that accurately report methodological and statistical information. You will combine this with experience of communicating complex evidence and analysis in a simple and accessible format to non-experts. 

• You are responsible, motivated and thrive in a fast-paced environment:  You take personal responsibility for critical decisions and have experience working in a fast-paced and rapidly evolving environment. You are extremely motivated and have a track record of delivery highly technical research and evidence work on time, on budget and to a high quality. 
   

• You are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. You believe and act in a way that celebrates and encourages a range of experiences, views and values. 

You may have, but they are not essential: 
 

• Good knowledge and understanding of crime, serious violence or other relevant areas: This could include areas such as child development, parenting or children’s mental health from fields such as psychology, neuroscience or education research. You know the facts, the risk and protective factors that impact youth criminality, understand the issues, know the key people and can discuss the theories. You are knowledgeable on this topic and very at ease discussing it with experts.  

• Great quantitative analysis skills: This includes experience of using advanced analytical software such as R, Stata or SPSS. Experience of using this software in the context of quasi-experimental evaluations would also be an advantage.

• Knowledge and experience of evidence synthesis: You know the different approaches and have carried out your own evidence synthesis projects.

• An understanding of the public policy and delivery context of youth crime and early intervention 

While it is not a criterion, we are especially interested to hear from applicants who have lived experience of youth violence. 

It is also important to us that the people we hire do not discriminate. We believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background. 

To apply 

To apply, please send a CV, cover letter and the monitoring form through our application page by 25th April 2021.  

Please ensure your cover letter explains your motivation for applying for the role and how you meeting the essential and desirable criteria

You should also include the contact details of two referees, one of whom must be your current or most recent employer. Referees will only be approached with your express permission. You will also be required to provide proof of your eligibility to work in the UK. We cannot provide sponsorship. As part of our commitment to flexible working we will consider a range of options for the successful applicant. All options can be discussed at interview stage. Interviews are due to take place in mid to late May.

Your personal data will be shared for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes our HR team, interviewers (who may include other partners in the project and independent advisors), relevant team managers and our IT service provider if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles. We do not share your data with other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you. We do not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.