Development manager jobs in Central london, greater london

The Development Manager is a new key role working closely with the Director to expand our fundraising and development activity, supporting artists and our charitable mission. You’ll be part of a collaborative, purpose-driven organisation with opportunities to shape our future development strategy and make a meaningful impact.

Development Manager 
Hybrid – London / Remote
Term: June 2026 – April 2028 (22 months), with possible extension 
Hours: 0.6 FTE (3 days per week)
Salary Band: £30,000–£35,000 FTE (pro rata)

For full details and how to apply, please read the Role Description via the website

About the Role

The Arts Foundation is seeking an energetic and experienced Development Manager to join its small, high-impact team. This is a key role supporting the Director in expanding the charity's fundraising and development activities and producing a series of high-quality events in support of artists and the Foundation's charitable aims and objectives. The post holder will be responsible for:

● Leading on prospect research, pipeline management, and the production of high-quality funding proposals and applications

● Stewarding and growing the Arts Foundation's portfolio of trust and foundation funders, donors, patrons and corporate sponsors

● Coordinating individual giving and legacy giving programmes, and developing an alumni programme.

● Setting up and overseeing a CRM system and maintaining accurate records

● Planning and delivering fundraising and other associated events

This is a central role that calls for someone who combines exceptional written communication and relationship-building skills with meticulous project and event management ability, and who is equally comfortable working independently and as part of a small collaborative team.

About Us

The Arts Foundation is a registered charity that supports individual artists and creatives in the UK with unconditional financial fellowships of £20,000 through the Arts Foundation Futures Awards. Since it was founded in 1993, the Arts Foundation has awarded over £2 million to the most promising artists in the UK at a pivotal moment in their careers to enable them to concentrate on their creative development, experiment, and realise their artistic potential. Our Fellows include leading figures across disciplines, and we are proud to champion artists shaping the future of the arts.

Deadline: 9am, Thursday 30 April 2026
Interviews: Week of 11 May 2026 (in person, West London)

Please note all applicants must have the right to work in the UK

We look forward to hearing from you!

Job Title: Business Development Manager (Fundraising & Earned Income)

Responsible to: Chief Executive

Location: Hybrid (with some in-person work as required)

Fulltime Salary: £42k pro rata (£25,200 for 3 days a week), dependent on experience 

Contract: Part-time (3 days a week), Permanent (subject to funding)

Role Purpose

The Business Development Manager will lead income generation for Sounddelivery Media, securing funding through grants, partnerships, and earned income from services offered to the SDM network and external clients. The role is critical to SDM’s sustainability and long-term growth.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and deliver SDM’s business development and income generation strategy.

• Develop earned-income opportunities, including consultancy, training, production, and services for the SDM network and beyond.

• Build and manage relationships with funders, commissioners, partners, and clients.

• Lead on writing high-quality funding applications, proposals, and pitches.

• Work with senior staff to develop budgets, pricing, and cost recovery models.

• Track income pipelines and report on progress and performance.

• Support organisational sustainability planning and strategic growth.

• Develop and implement effective strategies to utilise digital platforms in income generation and stakeholder immersive experiences. Including the effective use of online shopping and social media platforms.

• Work with the CEO to develop and deliver Sounddelivery Media’s ambitious income generation strategy, securing both our annual operating budget.

• Accountable for all fundraising and voluntary income generation, expanding further into major Corporate Partnerships, Philanthropy, Trusts & Foundations, Statutory Bodies, Grant makers, Major Gifts, Government Contracts, Supporter Engagement etc

• Prepare operational budgets for all income generation activities.

• Set clear, ambitious, measurable targets for income generating activity, making effective use of benchmarking and industry standards.

Person Specification

Experience (Essential):

• Proven experience in fundraising, business development, or income generation within the charity or social enterprise sector.

• Strong track record of securing grant funding and/or earned income.

• Excellent proposal and bid-writing skills.

• Strong financial literacy and experience developing budgets.

• Confident relationship builder with excellent communication skills.

Experience (Desirable):

• Experience of developing services for networks or membership organisations.

• Knowledge of the media, creative, or cultural sectors.

• Experience working with Corporate Partnerships, Philanthropy, Trusts & Foundations, Statutory Bodies, Grant makers, Major Gifts, Government Contracts, Supporter Engagement etc

• Proven experience delivering significant growth and working to sustain the income of organisations turnover up to £1 million.

• Experience of financial literacy, analysis and forecasting skills.

Skills & Abilities

• Ability to work on own initiative with minimum supervision

• Ability to carry out tasks in a meticulous and methodical manner and pay close attention to detail

Flexibility & Commitment

• An open and flexible attitude, willing to work as part of a team

• Honesty and integrity to maintain confidential information and data and handle money

About the Role

We are seeking a charity professional with evaluation and impact experience, and skills to develop Lewisham Local’s business functions such as service delivery impact with a focus on impact measurements of infrastructure work, premises, and admin.

This is a newly built role to support the charity’s new ambitious three-year strategy.

Main Objectives

• Develop and deliver the charity’s Impact and Evaluation framework
• Ensure charity’s CRM Salesforce is used at every level of capturing data

Support, develop and manage Lewisham Local’s business functions such as Admin and Premises management

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Impact Measurement

• Working closely with the SMT and project leads to understand the depth of the work carried out by Lewisham Local and develop an impact and evaluation framework to measure the success of our work.
• Train and support colleagues to ensure the framework is embedded into our daily work measuring the change created as a result of the work carried out by Lewisham Local.
• Run a quarterly impact report for SMT and Board
• Introduce data capture protocols and training on using the charity's CRM Salesforce to ensure data is recorded and up to date
• Act as a champion for this across the team

Manage Admin function

• Manage the two (job share - 0.8 & 0.2 FTE) Admin officers who support the CEO, Board and take on the general office admin tasks
• Develop and improve Lewisham Local’s admin processes

Manage premises – support and training will be offered

• Manage a Premises Coordinator (0.6FTE) in safe running the Orchard Gardens Community Centre
• Support the CEO in developing premises strategy and future proposals

Together with SMT and the CEO manage Lewisham local’s fundraising function, reviewing and contributing to the grant applications.

Core Team Responsibilities

• Build and share knowledge and intelligence internally
• Build strong and effective local relationships across sectors
• Be a visible, active, positive and engaging presence within the community at local events, activities and meetings.
• Contribute and create regular communications content
• Champion the role of local giving, and the contribution of civil society in Lewisham
• Collect and process data, carry out monitoring and evaluation of our impact
• Help other team members at times of increased workload and/or specific events
• Contribute to office organisation and administration responsibilities to ensure the effective running of the organisation and staff presence at the office premises
• Manage volunteers to achieve the portfolio and charity’s aims and objectives
• Attend regular team meetings and supervision sessions as required
• Undertake training and development as required
• Contribute to writing grant applications for future projects and core work

This is not an exhaustive list of tasks, and you may be asked to undertake any other reasonable duties in connection with the role. Job descriptions are reviewed regularly and may be amended at any time in accordance with the needs of the organisation

Please see attached the full job description and person specification.

The Development Manager (Grants) leads on bid-writing and relationship building with grantmakers (Trusts/Foundations/Public). The candidate will be a key player in the Grants team alongside the Director of Development (Grants/Major Gifts) and Development Officer. Create has seen its fundraising increase significantly in recent years, as it fulfils its ambitious plans to double its reach by its 25th anniversary in 2028. The Grants team is responsible for securing over 50% of the charity’s income, managing an extensive portfolio of T/F/Public funders, approaching a well-researched pipeline of potential funders, and researching prospects. The successful candidate will share Create’s commitment to the transformative power of the creative arts within community settings, with exceptional written and verbal communication, research, organisational and IT skills, and meticulous attention to detail.

About BIG Alliance

BIG Alliance (Businesses for Islington Giving) delivers business-supported employee volunteer programmes to strengthen links between businesses, community organisations and education institutions across Islington. In doing so, it aims to help address issues of poverty and isolation, which are prevalent across the borough, despite the perception of Islington being an area of high wealth. 43% of children are growing up in poverty, one if the highest rates in the country, and Islington is the 6th most deprived out of 32 London boroughs.

Established in 2012, BIG Alliance aims to make community investment easier, more effective and more rewarding for its business members.  It is a partnership between, East London Business Alliance – a registered charity that has been supporting the social and economic regeneration of east London for 30 years, Macquarie Group – principal funder and founder, and Islington Giving - funder and founder.  To date, BIG Alliance has placed more than 16,000 business professionals into volunteering opportunities within over 700 community organisations, schools, colleges and universities.

ELBA has an excellent employee benefits package including generous leave, flexible balance between working from home and the office, BUPA health cashplan; enhanced maternity and paternity pay; an active wellbeing and equalities programmes led by staff; a varied and busy learning and development schedule; cycle purchase scheme; and an Employee Assistance Helpline. including access to free accredited courses up to degree and post-graduate level. 

Purpose of the job

The main purpose of the job is to facilitate development and delivery of the BIG Alliance’s skills-based volunteering programme, which utilises the skills, experience and sector-specific expertise of employees within our business partners to support Islington’s community organisations and residents.

Our skilled volunteers are placed with a community partner or beneficiary either individually or join one of our annual programmes which include: CoRe (Community Resourcing), Board Builders, Leaders in Partnership and Time to Talk. Over 3,000 employees have been placed as skilled volunteers through BIG Alliance since 2012 providing expertise in law, finance, IT, HR, and marketing and communications to name just a few.

The postholder will be responsible for the successful delivery of various aspects of this programme, delivering exciting, innovative employer supported volunteering projects that meet the expectations of specific corporate supporters, and the needs of the community with key geographical focus in Islington.

Job Description

Main duties

• Collaborate closely with community partners, corporate partners and BIG team to understand community needs and design appropriate employee volunteering activities to address these needs

• Develop relationships and effective partnerships with key stakeholders in the community including the local authority and community infrastructure support organisations to maximise the impact of BIG Alliance’s work.

• Support the delivery of all business skills activity and the wider BIG Alliance programmes.

• Proactively market volunteering programmes to BIG Alliance corporate partners.

• Source, place and manage cohorts of corporate volunteers in line with business plan and project targets.

• Develop effective working relationships with community affairs team with BIG Alliance corporate partners, ensuring that these companies are supported to develop employee volunteering and other initiatives that meet their targets, priorities and strategies.

• Implement effective evaluation and impact measurement tools in line with BIG Alliance corporate partner requirements, ensuring that evaluation informs best practise to ensure continuous improvement.

• Work on any projects with BIG Alliance, as and when required.

General

• Use BIG Alliance’s internal systems to maintain records and report progress, including due diligence and volunteer recording via Salesforce

• Ensure that effective project management systems for monitoring and evaluation are in place and keep detailed records.

• Proactively generate case studies, news articles, photos and social media content to promote the work of BIG Alliance in line with BIG Alliance communication targets and protocols.

• Collaborate with other BIG Alliance colleagues on projects where appropriate and contribute to the development of BIG Alliance/ELBA as an organisation overall.

• Adhere to and implement policies, including equal opportunities and health and safety.

• Undertake any other reasonable duties as requested by your line manager.

ELBA wants to represent the diverse community we support and aims to be an inclusive employer in terms of ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation & background. We are an equal opportunities employer and we welcome all applications.

Please note this role is required to have an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. The successful candidate will be required to comply with ELBA's safeguarding policies and any appointment will be subject to satisfactory references as well as DBS.

Together for Short Lives is looking for a driven and creative Business Development Manager to develop and secure high‑value corporate partnerships that will help transform the lives of seriously ill children and their families. You’ll lead our business development strategy, build a strong pipeline of opportunities, and develop lasting relationships with prospective and existing supporters.

If you’re collaborative, tenacious and passionate about making a real impact in children’s palliative care, we’d love to hear from you.

Full‑time 1 year FTC | Hybrid (UK‑wide with travel to our Bristol Office) | £42,000

Purpose of role

The Business Development Manager will lead our efforts to secure high-profile, high-value partnerships with corporate organisations  that will generate vital income for children's palliative care. Securing new partnerships and growing our income requires exceptional collaboration skills; a driven, tenacious and resourceful nature; innovation and creativity; and a passionate determination to make a difference to the lives of children and families across the UK.

The main objectives are as follows:

1. Secure new corporate partnerships raising funds to support Together for Short Lives’ direct work, and our National Fundraising Scheme (raising funds on behalf of the UK’s children’s hospices).
2. Develop and deliver a business development strategy, including  prospect research, managing  a robust pipeline of opportunities, and developing a diverse range of business development products. 
3. Manage and develop relationships with a portfolio of individual contacts and organisations, including prospective and existing supporters.

Polka Theatre in Wimbledon seeks a Development & Events Manager to join our successful and welcoming team.

This is the role for you, if you:

· Would like to work for a pioneering national theatre for children.

· Enjoy planning and delivering fundraising events, which leverage immediate and ongoing support for the charity.

· Want to help a charity inspire supporters and build quality relationships with them, by telling the story of our impact.

· Are creative, personable, dynamic and great at communicating.

Polka is seeking a Development and Events Manager to coordinate Polka’s regular giving programmes, manage an established programme of events and oversee a committed portfolio of corporate supporters. As a key member of the Development Team, this is an exciting and rewarding opportunity to help shape Polka's future as a leading children's theatre. 

The Development and Events Manager will help donors feel inspired, appreciated, and compelled to support Polka. You will do this through high-quality communications and events for Polka’s donors, potential donors and corporate partners. The postholder will devise and coordinate a varied annual programme of stewardship and cultivation events and take a proactive role in attracting new supporters.

This is a permanent, full-time role. More details are in the recruitment pack on our website.

This role will suit candidates with fundraising experience, particularly with individual giving and events. We also welcome applications from people with transferable skills who can draw on their experience in other sectors. 

The role is primarily on site at Polka Theatre in Wimbledon, with up to 2 days working from home per week.

Polka's commitment as an equal opportunities employer means we are keen to encourage applications from people from the Global Majority, people across the gender spectrum and people who self-identify as disabled, who are underrepresented in our sector.

Polka is funded by Arts Council England, London, registered charity number 256979.

Resonance is an artist-led community radio station supporting experimental arts and under-represented voices. We’re looking for a Development Manager to take ownership of fundraising activity and help secure the income that sustains this work.

This is a hands-on role focused on trusts & foundations, donor communications and impact reporting. You’ll develop and manage a pipeline of funding applications, translate creative activity into clear and compelling narratives for funders, and contribute to growing individual giving.

Working within a small team, you’ll be expected to take responsibility for defined areas of fundraising activity, manage your own workflow and see work through to completion. You’ll work independently day-to-day, while collaborating with the CEO on priorities, positioning and key opportunities.

The role will suit someone with experience of developing or contributing to funding applications, strong writing skills, and the ability to interpret artistic or community activity and communicate its value clearly to external audiences.

Resonance broadcasts 24/7 on FM, DAB and online, working with hundreds of volunteer broadcasters and artists each year. As an independent charity, our work is sustained through listener support and grant funding.

This is a 4-day per week role (0.8 FTE), with a full-time equivalent salary of £43-45k, initially offered on a 12 month contract, offering a balance of autonomy, flexibility and meaningful work within a distinctive cultural organisation.

Job title: Senior Development Manager

Contract type: 1-year contract, 3-days per week (21hrs per week, standard office hours are 9am – 5pm, Monday – Friday. Work outside these hours is required on occasions. Flexible working subject to agreement).

Start date: April 2026

Salary: £45,000 - £55,000 per annum 

Holiday: 25 days + Public Holidays pro rata

Pension: Generous workplace pension scheme

Location: London, Somerset House 

Reporting to: Director

Travel: Occasional travel to projects and events may be required.

Safeguarding: In line with Art Explora’s Safeguarding Policy, all staff are required to have a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, which Art Explora will carry out upon appointment.

Art Explora’s mission is to tackle the social, economic and geographic barriers that prevent many people from having the opportunity to take part in the arts.

The role 

Art Explora UK is a small but entrepreneurial arts charity looking for an experienced fundraiser to join our dynamic team and help us implement a new fundraising strategy, and achieve our ambitious and exciting targets at a time of growth and opportunity.

This is a flexible part-time role for someone who is happy working independently, while liaising closely with the Director, Programme Heads and Trustees. On-boarding and hand-over will be with the current Fundraising Consultant. The Senior Development Manager will identify, cultivate, solicit, and manage funders and prospects, working across public sector, trusts, foundations and corporate supporters.  A particular focus will be on securing support for two high-profile, flagship programmes: Time Odyssey and the Mobile Museum, however there is significant potential to expand this scope of work.

The Senior Development Manager will be someone who thinks creatively, seizes opportunity and, with excellent inter-personal skills, brings experience, energy and drive to attract donors and prospects to the Charity’s exciting mission to innovate forms of engagement and increase access to arts and culture.

Specific Responsibilities

• Deliver against a 6-figure fundraising target, taking responsibility for a cohort of prospects, with a focus on trusts, foundations, public sector and corporate partners.

• Write compelling proposals/applications and reports for trusts and foundations, to engage supporters and demonstrate the impact of our work.

• Collaborate with colleagues, in particular the Director and Programme Heads, to source programme information, schedule meetings/calls with prospects, writing excellent briefing notes in advance.

• Adhere to best practice in prospect cultivation, solicitation and stewardship, and ensure the due diligence policies in place are followed.

• Deliver the highest level of donor care through excellent communication skills: building rapport with prospects and donors, and ensuring correspondence is appropriate and consistent.

• Set up and deliver cultivation events for prospects and donors that highlight the work of Art Explora and associated opportunities to support.

• Work closely with press/marketing to ensure messaging and brand identity is aligned.

Key outcomes

• Achieve fundraising target

• Expand and progress the existing pipeline of prospects and donors

• Demonstrate highest level of prospect/donor interaction and relations – actions that result in an engaged and informed donor pool

• Produce excellent and regular donor communications, both written and in-person.

• Submit in a timely fashion proposals and reports.

• Deliver excellent development events as required, within budget.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

• 4+ years’ experience in donor-facing fundraising, with a focus on the arts/education sector. 

• Highly organised with the ability to work at pace and manage a number of projects and priorities simultaneously.

• Demonstrable experience of working to and meeting challenging fundraising targets; proven ability to secure six-figures awards.

• Experience of independently managing a designated group of donors and prospects and moving those relationships forward to successful outcomes.

• An understanding of and commitment to excellent stewardship and donor care

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; a developed ability to influence and inspire donors and prospects around a given cause or project.

• Confidence to drive forward relationships with donors and prospects, meeting independently and presenting proposals face-to-face and in writing.

• Flexibility to occasionally work outside of normal office hours and travel to various locations as required.

• A passion for the arts and an understanding of the arts education landscape.

If you feel you meet some of the criteria but not all, please feel free to enquire and learn more.

Deadline: 11:59pm Sunday 12  April 2026.

The interviews will be the week commencing 20 April.

We are an Equal Opportunities Employer and welcome applications from people with diverse backgrounds. We strive to promote an inclusive environment, which celebrates and promotes diversity.

For any queries regarding eligibility or the job specification please contact Art Explora.