Director of marketing and communications jobs in aberdeen, aberdeen city
The Opportunity:
Nigel Wright Group are proud to be partnering with a transformative and growing social impact organisation in their search for a Business Development Manager. Our client is a passionate, values-led charity and their mission is to bridge the gap between talented individuals and employers offering rewarding job opportunities, creating a thriving community where everyone has the chance to succeed. They deliver on skills shortages, push back on regional unemployment and contribute to a national reduction in reoffending. Following a significant inward investment, our client is positioning itself to embark on an ambitious nationwide scaling-up programme. The newly created Business Development Manager role can be based anywhere in the UK and carries the responsibility of contributing to the organisation’s overarching strategic plan, while also leading the development and implementation of the accompanying income generation strategy.
Role Profile:
- Lead and coordinate activities to position the charity for successful public sector contracts and tenders.
- Identify and pursue new and repeat business opportunities; attend market engagement events and monitor sector trends.
- Develop strategic partnerships to enhance reach and impact.
- Maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date pipeline of business development and grant opportunities.
- Prepare and submit high-quality, competitive tenders as a lead or subcontractor.
- Develop proposals aligned with service specifications, incorporating input from operational teams.
- Collaborate with the CEO and Finance Director to ensure accurate, fully costed and competitive bid pricing.
- Write and submit persuasive bids via relevant online platforms.
- Line manage a Grant Writer, overseeing the submission of high-value and multi-year trust and foundation applications.
- Support the CEO in cultivating relationships with major donors and securing significant contributions.
- Manage public donations, lead fundraising initiatives, and ensure compliance with fundraising regulations.
- Produce compelling quarterly impact reports to communicate the charity’s outcomes to funders.
Person Specification:
- Demonstrated success in writing and securing competitive tenders, particularly within the criminal justice or related sectors.
- Proven ability to develop high-quality bids for statutory funding.
- Extensive experience in generating significant income from charitable trusts and foundations.
- Strong background in designing or contributing to effective income generation strategies.
- Experience in leveraging social value commitments—especially through government procurement and Section 106 obligations—is highly desirable.
- Skilled in building and maintaining relationships with high-net-worth individuals.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence, network, and engage diverse audiences.
- Knowledge of the criminal justice system or related fields is a strong advantage.
- Awareness of the employment challenges faced by people with convictions is desirable.
Behaviours:
- Maintains a non-judgemental approach when working with individuals with lived experience of the criminal justice system.
- Committed to inclusive, anti-discriminatory practices.
- Demonstrates alignment with and respect for the organisation’s Christian ethos and values.
Other Information:
- This is a full-time role offered on a hybrid/remote working pattern
- Occasional visits to the Newcastle head office plus business travel around the UK
- Nigel Wright Group is retained on this search and as such, any direct third party supplied or referred applicants/CVs will be forwarded to Nigel Wright for consideration as part of our process.
Recruitment Agency 
Thank you!
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Full-time - 37 hours per week
Salary: £36,000 - £40,000 per annum (dependent on experience and qualifications)
Remote: This role is homebased (within the UK) with occasional travel for staff residentials and other events. Ideally the post-holder will live in commutable distance to our office in Leicester.
What we do
As the national body for youth work, the NYA has a dual function. We are the professional statutory and regulatory body (PSRB) responsible for qualifications, quality standards, and safeguarding for youth work and services in England. In line with our charity mission and aims, we also champion youth work through research, advocacy, campaigns, and programmes.
We work in partnership and believe in collaborative leadership, listening to youth workers and the youth work sector so that we can understand their needs and respond to the challenges they face. We are ambitious for youth work and for young people and integrate youth voice and influence across our work
About the Role
Responsibilities of the role comprise:
Campaign planning
- Lead the delivery of an ambitious and creative media and campaign strategy to bring about an improved recognition of the value and impact of youth work.
- Lead on other campaign strategy and planning, utilising a range of campaign tactics integrating media, digital media and other campaign tactics, working closely with other members of the Comms team and across Directorates.
- Oversee campaign activity for the annual Youth Work Week, to ensure the campaign engages key opinion formers and provides an opportunity for those within the sector to celebrate the impactful work they do.
- Analyse campaign effectiveness, including setting and tracking metrics across digital and traditional media.
- Ensure campaign plans are fully scoped and uploaded to the online project management system.
- Leading on strategic approaches to celebrity supporters / ambassadors and ongoing relationship management.
Press Office function
- Lead proactive media monitoring, enabling timely responses to significant developments and tracking positions on issues relating to NYA’s work.
- Develop key messages and positioning statements on issues in the youth sector and NYA’s activities, role and stance and promote consistency of messaging across NYA’s channels.
- Managing and responding to reactive media enquiries, providing statement and reactive ‘lines to take’, with the support of the Head of Communications
- Producing engaging content for various channels and audiences including press releases, blogs, opinion pieces and media briefings to elevate NYA’s profile and demonstrate our expertise and thought leadership.
- Managing the media monitoring and media database, nurturing relationships with target journalists, as well as online news outlets and thought leaders on key strategic issues.
- Confidently working with charity and corporate partners to maximise opportunities to demonstrate the impact of their support.
- Provide line management and development support to two Communication Officers.
About You
Essential competencies of the Campaigns and Media Manager:
- A self-starter brimming with creative ideas and proven experience of designing and executing high-impact campaigns that bring about a measurable change in knowledge, behaviour and / or policy.
- Strong interpersonal skills for building effective relationships with colleagues and external stakeholders, including political audiences, and confident in growing new relationships and leading meetings.
- An ability to grasp complex information and distil key messages for different audiences and crucially, which tactics and channels to use to engage them
- Have proven experience and a strong understanding of the UK media landscape, with demonstrable experience of having nurtured relationships with national and sector journalists to garner high-quality coverage.
- An understanding of how to use research and intelligence gained from listening exercises and other stakeholder insights to inform campaign messaging and metrics.
- Be skilled in developing media strategics and developing case studies and using data to create compelling new hooks
- Be proficient in evaluating campaigns and media outputs, with the ability to derive insights that inform future strategies.
- Be proficient in drafting statements and media responses at speed and in line with key messages.
- Have outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce and edit content to a journalistic standard across diverse audiences and channels.
- Have an understanding of how to use social media platforms to engage audiences effectively, understanding their role in broader campaign strategies.
- Be experienced in line management and fostering the NYA culture of personal growth
- Excellent project management skills - able to keep track of all the moving parts to keep tasks on track and mitigate risks. Experience of using project management platform (or similar) would be an advantage.
- An understanding of data protection and safeguarding young people.
- A passion for using effective communications to promote youth work and celebrate the achievements of young people and youth workers.
- Highly competent in all Microsoft suite and ideally have experience of Google Drive and Sharepoint.
Please refer to our Candidate Pack for more information on the role and the requirements.
Why Work for NYA?
NYA operates as a people-first organisation, prioritising the well-being and needs of its employees.
NYA offers an exceptional flexible working approach which encourages our team to balance professional responsibilities with their personal life.
A remote based team, spread across England, fostering inclusivity and diverse talent. Despite geographical distances between team members, NYA maintains a highly motivated and connected team through the optimisation of digital tools.
NYA is committed to supporting the continual personal and professional development of our team and helping them achieve their ambitions.
We provide 25 days leave plus 8 days, life assurance scheme, 5% employer pension contribution and a comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme via Spectrum.life with unlimited specialist support available to all NYA employees.
How to Apply:
Please download our applicant pack to find out more about the role and requirements
To apply, please submit the following via our online application platform by 11:59pm on Friday 13th July 2025:
A detailed CV setting out your career history, with responsibilities and achievements in line with the person specification in the About You section.
A covering letter (maximum two sides) highlighting your suitability for the role and how you meet the requirements in the About You section.
We will request data for our EEDI monitoring purposes, providing this is optional.
Please note: the covering letter is an essential part of the application process and will be assessed as part of your full application. We use AI detector software, so cover letters or CV’s with over 30% AI generated content with be disregarded. We understand that AI tools can offer support to candidates who have learning differences, which is why we will accept applications with some AI assistance. CV’s will not be accepted without a cover letter.
The National Youth Agency is an equal opportunities employer.
At NYA our inclusive culture means that we embrace individual differences and understand that we need a diverse team to achieve our organisations mission.
We wish to recruit candidates from all backgrounds to ensure our team reflects the rich diversity of the communities we serve. We encourage applications from anyone regardless of disability, ethnicity, heritage, gender, sexuality, religion, socio-economic background and political beliefs but we particularly welcome applications from global majority candidates and those from other minoritised ethnic groups in the UK as they are currently underrepresented in our team.
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Thank you!
This new role at Young Sounds UK will provide a wide range of support across the organisation, managing the logistics for our events, assisting our Development team with vital fundraising tasks, and handling a wide range of organisational administration.
You'll need to be proactive, highly organised, and looking for a busy role within a passionate team. With at least 3 years experience you'll be keen to use your strong communication skills and attention to detail to provide high standards of administrative support.
For full information on this role, including key responsibilities and person specification, please view the job pack.
The closing date for applications is Tuesday 15 July 2025 at 12 noon.
About Young Sounds UK
Young Sounds UK exists because musical talent is everywhere but opportunity isn’t: family finances and other obstacles too often get in the way. We’re here to change this in two key ways:
- We support young musicians from low-income families with funding and other help
- We support music education through training, advocacy and research.
Established in 1998 we work across genres and across the UK. Our four programme areas are:
- Discover: training teachers in how to spot young people’s musical potential
- Connect: targeting and sustaining young people’s emerging talent through strategic support
- Thrive: funding young talent UK wide through annual grants and tailor-made help for individual musicians
- Innovate: leading new thinking and action on talent development
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Thank you!
This is a unique opportunity for an experienced leader to help diversify the environmental sector by scaling a Black-led nature organisation to be able to demonstrate leadership on a national scale and promote and serve the interests and needs of ethnically marginalized communities in accessing nature.
Our Ambition
We’re on an exciting journey of growth. Our vision is to become a nationally recognised, well-resourced Black institution for learning about and caring for nature.
We aim to:
- Be the go-to resource for people of colour learning about the natural world and accessing outdoor spaces with confidence.
- Be the go-to resource for mainstream environmental organisations seeking to understand Black and Brown perspectives on nature.
- Strengthen networks and community among POC-led nature organisations across the UK.
Our operating income for 2025-2026 is £230,000. Our ambition is to generate an income of over £1 million by 2027-2028, growing to a 15+ staff team.
How the COO will support our vision
The role of Chief Operating Officer is central to helping us achieve our ambitions, ensuring that Wild in the City has the resources, infrastructure and working environment to achieve its annual plans, long term aims and deliver high-quality programmes.
We are not expecting the COO to implement the key areas of operations alone, we will work together to prioritise and generate the resources to build a team to cover the functionality required for steady growth. We are also motivated to ensure that the role’s salary is reviewed to meet market expectations as the role grows, dependent on funding.
This role needs an exceptional candidate who enjoys making a role their own, who is motivated by turning strategy into impactful action and who finds fulfilment in supporting others to achieve.
The COO will ensure that;
- We secure ongoing, long term financial resources, creating stability and underpinning growth, and scaling into operations in multiple regions, nationally
- We grow our staffing to provide a steady infrastructure and achieve our strategic objectives, including creating operations, fundraising, communications and research teams, and increasing our field team.
- We retain our relational, open, authentic, personable, dynamic, collaborative, innovative culture as we grow.
Who We're Looking For
We are looking for a dynamic and dependable Chief Operating Officer (COO) to help realise our vision.
We’re seeking an emotionally intelligent, commercially competent, and values-driven leader who can bring clarity, stability, and energy in a fast-paced and mission-led environment. You will thrive in turning strategy into action and impact, and in driving Wild in the City forward in scaling our delivery and leadership on a national scale.
You will bring:
- Proven experience in operational and strategic leadership
- Strong financial and commercial acumen, including income generation, budgeting, and long-term planning
- A successful track record of managing people, partnerships, and multi-disciplinary teams
- Excellent communication and relationship-building skills across staff, volunteers, partners, and board members
- Emotional resilience, sound judgement, and a calm, authentic presence
- A genuine connection to our mission and values
We welcome people from all backgrounds to fulfill the role of COO. We are mindful of the lack of diversity within senior leadership in the environmental field and encourage those from Global Majority backgrounds to apply.
Why Join Us?
This is an exciting time to join Wild in the City, we hope that you will make an application. As COO, you’ll play a central role in shaping the next chapter of our development - growing our influence, supporting Black leadership in nature, and helping transform access to the natural world for communities of colour.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.