Executive assistant and project support officer jobs

Community Fundraising Lead

We are looking for an ambitious and proactive Community Fundraising Lead to engage individuals, schools, and community groups across the East of England, maximising income generation and supporting the hospitals to deliver exceptional patient care.

Position: Community Fundraising Lead

Location: Cambridge / Hybrid (minimum two days per week in the office)
Salary: £30,000 - £34,000 per annum (depending on skills and experience)
Hours: Full-time, 37.5 hours per week
Contract: Permanent

Closing date: 11.59pm on Sunday 23rd November 2025 (we may close early if sufficient applications are received).

About the role:

As the Community Fundraising Lead, you’ll play a key role in developing and delivering our community fundraising strategy with a particular focus on schools, community groups, and challenge events across six counties (Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, and Bedfordshire). You’ll build meaningful relationships, inspire local supporters, and help drive forward exciting campaigns including fundraising for a new cancer hospital and a new children’s hospital.

This is a unique opportunity to make a tangible difference, helping to deliver life-changing projects and ensure the highest quality of care for every patient.

About you:

You’ll be a confident and creative fundraiser with a proven ability to build relationships, deliver strategies, and achieve income targets. Organised and proactive, you thrive in a fast-paced environment and are comfortable managing multiple priorities. A natural communicator and motivator, you’ll be passionate about healthcare and inspired by the opportunity to make a real impact for patients and their families.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and deliver an annual community fundraising plan focused on schools, groups, and challenge events.
• Build, nurture, and steward relationships with fundraisers, ensuring excellent supporter experience and retention.
• Collaborate with colleagues across the organisation to identify new opportunities for engagement.
• Represent the organisation at events and within local communities across the East of England.
• Monitor income, evaluate activities, and report on progress against targets.
• Act as an ambassador promoting the benefits and impact of fundraising.

Essential Skills & Experience:

• Proven experience in community fundraising within a charity or not-for-profit organisation.
• Strong relationship-building skills with a range of supporters and stakeholders.
• Experience of developing and delivering successful fundraising strategies.
• Excellent organisational and time-management skills with the ability to prioritise competing demands.
• Strong communication skills with an eye for detail.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively as part of a team.
• Full UK driving licence (travel across the East of England is required).

In return:

This is an amazing place to work! Recently voted one of the top 100 hospitals in the world and a leader in the field of healthcare innovation, recognised across the world as a pre-eminent teaching hospital.

You will receive a fantastic benefits package including:

• Pension Scheme with 7% Employer Contribution
• 25 days Annual Leave + Bank Holidays + Your Birthday off (increases to 29 days after 2 years)
• Group Life Assurance (4x salary)
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay
• Annual Eye Tests + £65 towards computer-use glasses
• On-site Leisure Centre
• NHS Discount Schemes
• Health Cash Plan – Medicash
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Cycle to Work Scheme

We strongly encourage candidates of different backgrounds and identities to apply. Each new team member brings a unique perspective, and we’re always looking to enrich and diversify our charity.

Other roles you may have experience in could include Fundraising, Fundraiser, Community, Community Fundraiser, Community Fundraising, Community Engagement Officer, Volunteer Coordinator, Fundraising Assistant, or Charity Support Officer, Events Fundraiser, Individual

Giving, Supporter Engagement, In Memory Fundraiser, Challenge Events Fundraiser.

PLEASE NOTE: This role is being advertised by NFP People on behalf of the organisation.

Starting Salary: £54,269 - £59,422 (including LW)  

Contract: Permanent  

Location: Romero House, London - Hybrid working with a minimum of 40% of your time in the London head Office

Job Profile

CAFOD has an ambition to be digital first in our marketing and communications, to stay ahead of emerging trends and make the most of what digital technology can offer to strengthen our relationships with our supporters and in our ways of working across the organisation. Digital technology has already transformed our communications and will continue to do so. This senior communications and marketing role will be responsible for steering the ongoing digital transformation of CAFODs work, primarily in the supporter programme and also across the wider organisation.

This role encompasses overall responsibility for the brand, digital marketing, messaging, proactive and reactive media relations, with a core focus on digital transformation across all platforms. This post will play a key role in guiding our digital shop fronts and marketing efforts, evolving supporter journeys, steering our email programme and leading on the digital infrastructure to enable delivery of our supporter programme. It will ensure that digital engagement and conversion is embedded and an integral part of our communications planning. 

This role will drive innovation and data-informed insight across the full spectrum of communications and wider organisation functions. It will embed a digital-first approach across teams and guide and accompany the wider organisation on harnessing opportunities of new technologies, making digital engagement integral to communications planning. 

This role will drive brand awareness, brand advocacy and action across our programmes to ensure CAFOD is top of mind amongst the Catholic Community of England and Wales, helping to grow support from our constituency. You will bring proven senior-level experience in digital communications and marketing, ideally within the charity sector. With a strong understanding of communications at a senior level with expert knowledge of digital channels, audience engagement, and online conversion, you also have a strategic grasp of how digital integrates into broader communications and supporter strategies. Your leadership style is collaborative and visionary, and you have the gravitas and expertise to set the digital marketing direction for a large organisation, while bringing all teams along with your vision.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the strategic development, direction setting and delivery of an ambitious, insight-led digital-first communications strategy that enhances supporter journeys, increases engagement and drives measurable growth in support of our supporter programme, especially our parishioner-first fundraising strategy. 

• Act as CAFODs senior expert on communications, advising the Executive team, across departments and influencing strategic decision-making, including on digital direction and development, at the highest level. 

• Lead complex cross-organisational projects that improve our digital supporter experience, from acquisition to long-term engagement and conversion, ensuring timeliness and consistency with supporter programme priorities, especially the parishioner-first fundraising strategy and approach. 

• Provide leadership and overall oversight of external communications and messaging, including brand consistency and press/media engagement, ensuring consistency between our fundraising efforts, our campaigning work and profiling our international work to supporters and key stakeholders.

• Lead and oversee the digital teams - email marketing programme, social media engagement, digital developments, campaigns and the website, to ensure user experience is optimised and platforms support our supporter programme and broader organisational strategic objectives and ambitions. 

• Lead the media team to explore and encourage new approaches including how we further maximise the digital media landscape.

• Line manage senior specialists across digital marketing, website, and media and PR, ensuring high performance and professional growth. 

• Work closely with IT, data and external agencies to ensure agile, secure and effective digital delivery across platforms. 

• Represent the organisation externally where appropriate, with a focus on digital thought leadership. 
• Develop and manage the communications budget effectively, aligning resources to priority areas and demonstrating clear impact. Agree and ensure accountability for objectives and KPIs as part of the wider supporter strategy, fostering a culture of ongoing learning, adaptation and improvement.  

Safeguarding 

All CAFOD staff share responsibility to promote and maintain a strong safeguarding culture, including identifying the key actions they should take given their role and responsibilities.

Person Specification 

• Extensive experience in a senior digital communications and marketing leadership role, with demonstrable success in developing and delivering integrated and audience-led multi-channel communications and marketing strategies. 
• Strong experience of overseeing development of supporter journeys and objectives, website development, CRM integration and email engagement and conversion. 
• Passionate about digital innovation and technologies, with deep knowledge of platforms, formats, and trends. 
• Committed to insight-led and data-driven approaches with skills to use digital tools, platforms and analytics to shape decisions and measure impact. 
• Excellent leadership, inter-personal and team management skills, with the ability to develop and motivate multi-disciplinary teams. 
• Strong cross-functional project management ability, with experience leading organisational change in digital capability. 
• Understanding of broader communications and marketing disciplines, with the ability to ensure alignment and brand consistency and also oversee media and PR work, including reputational risk and crisis communications. 
• Understanding of the Catholic church in England and Wales and knowledge of Catholic Social Teaching. 
• A track record of strong written and spoken communication skills. 
• Highly organised, able to manage a busy workload and consistently meet deadlines. 

Safeguarding for Children and Vulnerable Adults 

CAFOD recognises the personal dignity and rights of children and vulnerable adults, towards whom it has a special responsibility and a duty of care and respect.  CAFOD, and all its staff and volunteers, undertake to do all in our power to create a safe environment for children, young people and vulnerable adults and to prevent their physical, sexual or emotional abuse.  CAFOD is committed to acting at all times in the best interests of children and vulnerable adults, seeing these interests as paramount.  Any candidate offered a job with CAFOD will be expected to adhere to CAFOD’s Safeguarding policy and sign CAFOD’s Code of Conduct as an appendix to their contract of employment and agree to conduct themselves in accordance with the provisions of these documents.

All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references, and appropriate screening checks can include criminal records and terrorism finance checks. CAFOD also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms his/her understanding of, and consent to, these recruitment procedures.