Head of communications jobs

Salary: up to £55,000 per annum 

Location: Newark, Nottinghamshire - Hybrid working with regular travel to other places of work.  

Office opening days are Tuesdays to Thursdays 

Full time: 35 hours per week  

Permanent 

Closing date for applications: 1 February 2026 

First interview: : 13 February 2026 

Second interview: 23 February 2026 

About Us 

The Wildlife Trusts are a grassroots movement of people from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life, who believe that we need nature and nature needs us. We have more than 945,000 members, over 33,000 volunteers, 4,100 staff and 600 trustees. There are 46 individual Wildlife Trusts, each of which is a place-based independent charity with its own legal identity, formed by groups of people getting together and working with others to make a positive difference to wildlife and future generations, starting where they live and Work. 

Every Wildlife Trust is part of The Wildlife Trusts federation and a corporate member of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a registered charity in its own right founded in 1912 and one of the founding members of IUCN – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Taken together this federation of 47 charities is known as The Wildlife Trusts. 

The next few years will be critical in determining what kind of world we all live in. We need to urgently reverse the loss of wildlife and put nature into recovery at scale if we are to prevent climate and ecological disaster. We recognise that this will require big, bold changes in the way The Wildlife Trusts work, not least in how we mobilise others and support them to organise within their own communities. 

About You 

Are you a creative storyteller who loves bringing ideas to life through brilliant copy, photography, video and social-first content? We are seeking an experienced content specialist to lead the production of high-impact communications that help more people connect with The Wildlife Trusts’ cause and put nature into Recovery. 

Our Head of Communications plays a leading role in enabling The Wildlife Trusts to deliver inspiring, impactful and brand-aligned engagement with our target audiences. 

You will bring your experience of translating strategy and audience insights into content that gets people talking, to help strengthen our brand and inspire more people to take meaningful action for nature. 

You will be responsible for leading and developing teams tasked with content creation (including publications, events, graphic design and film), social media management and ambassador and influencer relations. 

An excellent writer, with a flair for design and the ability to commission compelling photography and video content, you will be brimming with fresh ideas, alongside having a strong track record in delivering to agreed strategic priorities and timeframes. 

You will be well-versed in managing creative teams, both in-house and agency, and overseeing the production of high-quality content that reinforces the brand and meets audience needs 

The Wildlife Trusts value passion, respect, trust, integrity, pragmatic activism and strength in diversity. Whilst we are passionate in promoting our aims, we are not judgmental and are inclusive. We particularly encourage applications from people who are underrepresented within our sector, including people from minority backgrounds and people with disabilities. We are committed to creating a movement that recognises and truly values individual differences and identities. 

RSWT take our Safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously. Please click here to read our commitment statement. The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults at risk. For applicable roles, applicants must be willing to undergo checks with past employers and Disclosure and Barring Service checks at the eligible level. 

As a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to offering an interview to anyone with a disability that meets all the essential criteria for the post. Please let us know if you require any adjustments to make our recruitment process more accessible.  

RSWT are committed to increasing the diversity of its staff through its Levelling the Field recruitment pledge and will put any ethnic minority applicants that meet all the essential criteria for the post through to the next stage of recruitment. 

At RSWT, we are committed to creating a safe environment where discrimination, bullying, and harassment are not tolerated. We expect everyone to uphold, respect, and support our zero-tolerance policy. 

Please be aware we may not accept applications if we have reason to believe they have been wholly produced using generative AI tools. 

About the role

The role of Head of Audiences and Communications offers a hugely exciting opportunity for a creative, dynamic and strategic communications and marketing professional to join a young and ambitious charity at a pivotal moment in its evolution.

You will be able to develop and deliver creative and compelling multi-channel campaigns to meet objectives including:

• Raising the profile of the park and its iconic, award-winning indoor and outdoor venues, such as the Crystal Palace Subway, Italian Terraces, and Concert Platform and Crystal Palace Museum as a home for world-class arts, culture and heritage;
• Broadening access, deepening participation and extending reach with larger and more diverse audiences;
• Providing a high level of customer service to park visitors, users and the surrounding communities;
• Supporting income generation as part of the Trust’s remit to deliver an innovative new business model to underpin a sustainable and vibrant future for this complex and historic landscape; and
• Promoting opportunities for local residents to get involved in caring for this unique landscape such as volunteering, membership and philanthropic giving.

To help achieve these objectives you will oversee the work of a Content and Marketing Manager to ensure the smooth and efficient delivery of all communications and marketing channels whether digital, press or physical in-park signage.

Where you'll be working

At over 200 acres, Crystal Palace Park is far larger than most urban parks. Beloved as a ‘back garden’ to many people in the surrounding neighbourhoods, it is also of national and international significance due to its design as the grounds to the Victorian architectural masterpiece, The Crystal Palace, and its rich, unique heritage, including the 170-year-old world-famous Dinosaurs.

Today, circa one million people visit the park every year; to relax and meet friends and family, take part in sports and physical exercise, enjoy world-class acts during summer festivals, or simply have a moment of peace and enjoyment of nature.

In September 2023, after 25 years of community campaigning, Crystal Palace Park Trust took over custodianship of this historic landscape and its unique venues via a 125-year lease from the London Borough of Bromley. We are now working closely with a wide-range of partners to deliver a multi-million-pound regeneration and restoration project that will save the park's globally unique heritage and drive a 35% increase in annual visitor numbers.

Job Description and Person Specification

For full details of the role, its responsibilities and the person specification please download the application pack.

How to apply

For more information on how to apply, review the application pack and submit the required documents by the closing date of 10:00 on Monday 26 January 2026.

• CV
• Cover letter
• Equal opportunities form

Crystal Palace Park Trust is an equal opportunities employer. We believe that our staff should represent the communities, organisations, and individuals that we work with and support. We welcome applications from all qualified individuals regardless of race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality.

Location: Office-based (currently Bethnal Green, likely to be Euston from Sept 2026) with some home working.

Salary/job band: £56,463 (for 36 hrs) or PTE

Team: Fundraising & Communications

Contract type: Permanent

Hours: 28-36 hrs per week

Reports to: Director

Line manages: Fundraising co-managers, communications manager

Purpose of role

To plan and oversee QSA’s income generation and communications work. To strategically support the success of QSA as part of the leadership team.

Role overview

This is a linchpin role for QSA. We are looking for a hard-working, experienced and creative fundraiser. Our head of fundraising & communications oversees all of our income generation portfolio, including charitable trusts, public bodies, individual giving, and fundraising events.

Above all, we are looking for a candidate who believes in QSA’s mission and values, who can convey this passion through our fundraising and communications. 

We recognise that the current fundraising climate is challenging. As a charity, we have a sizable and engaged network of supporters and an excellent reputation for delivering innovative services.

The head of fundraising & communications is also responsible for overseeing QSA’s communications output, ensuring we build great relationships and successfully share our impact, stories and expertise across a variety of channels.

This is an exciting opportunity to build up a broad experience base in communications. Our approach to this work is centred in an ethical storytelling mindset. Our work has a national profile and we’re keen to maintain our reputation and our media presence.

Our head of fundraising & communications will also join the leadership team, working closely with the head of finance, the head of services and the director. This is a tight knit group with the purpose of supporting the longer term and strategic work of QSA.

You will be welcomed into a wider team at QSA that is enthusiastic, expert, and highly committed to social justice. We are proud of our ability to collaborate successfully and to celebrate one another’s success.

About Quaker Social Action (QSA)

Quaker Social Action’s mission is twofold. We enable people on low incomes to seek solutions to the issues affecting their lives. We listen and respond to the needs of communities and run practical, sustainable and collaborative projects.

Secondly, we share our learning where we see the potential to bring benefit to communities outside of our own – by running professional training, and by speaking truth to power to seek structural change.

Our services include crisis support for those unable to afford funerals; practical support for people experiencing homelessness, such as a mobile library and a community kitchen space; and free mindfulness and wellbeing programmes.

QSA has a rich 150-year history with roots in the Quaker movement. Our work is still guided by Quaker values like Truth and Justice, and we are proud of our place within the Quaker community. At the same time, there is nothing religious about our work: our services, jobs and volunteering roles are open to all.

“The advice and support was beyond beneficial. As a family we were just above the threshold for getting any financial support and at a very difficult time already, money worries was the last thing we needed.”   

- Down to Earth funeral costs helpline caller

Duties & responsibilities

Income generation

1. To design and develop a fundraising strategy for QSA, incorporating a wide range of approaches, including statutory sources, charitable trusts, individual donations, legacies, earned income from training, and event fundraising.
2. To set clear targets based on previous trends, and realistic aspirations for growth.
3. To ensure all fundraising activity sits within the required legislative framework and complies with best practice, especially regarding donor consent.
4. To ensure accurate financial information is presented within fundraising materials.
5. To ensure that QSA fundraising applications are supported by up-to-date evidence of need, gained from relevant research and policy developments.
6. To ensure that QSA fundraising applications are supported by up-to-date evidence of impact, gained from internal monitoring systems.
7. To identify and lead major funding applications.
8. To build strong and warm relationships with funders and donors of QSA.
9. To ensure QSA is compliant with all grants and contracts and provides accurate and timely monitoring reports back to funders.
10. To ensure that project teams are aware of funders supporting their work and are clear what targets or commitments are in place with these funders, including reporting requirements.

Communications, marketing, media, brand, digital

1. To design and develop a communications and marketing strategy for QSA, incorporating a wide range of approaches across a number of appropriate channels and platforms.
2. To understand best practice in charity communications and marketing and use this to promote the work of QSA.
3. To manage QSA’s approach to reputational risk through our communications output.
4. To oversee the development of the content, structure and key messages of QSA’s online communications channels; specifically our website, email marketing and varied social media platforms.
5. To oversee the digital marketing development of QSA, ensuring we have clear systems and protocols to analyse, track, measure and review our output.
6. To understand the benefit of and risks of using AI in our fundraising and comms output and to be part of the strategic leadership around emerging best practice.  
7. To oversee diverse and evolving ways to communicate, using podcasts, videos, data, photos as well as high quality copy.
8. To oversee media relations and protocols for media engagement for QSA.
9. To develop proactive and strategic communications responses very quickly or under pressure to manage situations of risk or opportunity for QSA.
10. To oversee and develop the QSA brand, ensuring it communicates our core purpose and is consistent with our values.
11. To oversee our duty of care to our participants who share their stories, ensuring we approach this with due care, sensitivity and respect for their autonomy, and that we have sufficient safeguards in place to be attentive to their wellbeing.

Leadership

1. To work collaboratively with the leadership team to support the strategic development of QSA. To provide materials that support QSA’s trustees to undertake their governance tasks.
2. To work alongside the head of finance to provide accurate and timely quarterly reports for the trustees’ finance & fundraising committee.
3. With the head of finance, to be responsible for regular reconciliation of finance and fundraising records and for annual audit processes.
4. To work alongside leadership colleagues in all operational matters. To offer ideas for service development, to identify resource needs, and to share strategies to support team wellbeing.  

Organisational requirements

1. To work within, and actively promote, the policies and procedures of QSA.
2. Any other duties as appropriate to the role, as agreed by the QSA director. 

“I feel the service from these marvellous book fans and their very committed, caring staff are an essential…I use them twice a week every week. Please may they continue.”   

- Visitor to Turn a Corner mobile library for people experiencing homelessness.

Person specification

Experience

1. Significant experience of charity fundraising from a wide range of sources, especially charitable trusts and individual donors. 
2. Experience of communications activities/digital development is highly desirable.

Skills

1. Ability to write creative and engaging copy for a range of different audiences.
2. Ability to build excellent collaborative working relationships with a wide range of people; including within the close-knit QSA team, external partners, funders and QSA supporters. 

Knowledge

1. Knowledge of differing funding streams suitable for an anti-poverty charity – i.e. trusts, statutory sources, corporate support, individuals, legacies.
2. Knowledge of a range of communications channels and platforms and of the best ways for a charity to utilise these.
3. Knowledge of technology, including AI, as a way of furthering reach and impact. 

Personal Qualities

1. Exceptional ability to prioritise workload and accurately deliver work to deadline.
2. Demonstrates inner resilience, and ambition to deliver work of the highest standard.
3. Ability to be flexible and have a ‘hands-on’ attitude when required.
4. Commitment to and understanding of the role of equity, diversity and inclusion, in the workplace and in service provision.
5. A willingness to work within a Quaker ethos, as clarified by the mission of QSA.

Main terms and conditions of employment

1. QSA uses the local government pay scales for salaries. Your salary will be on NJC scale point 41-44, which starts at £56,463 (including London weighting) for a full-time/36 hours post. All appointments are made at bottom of scale. 
2. This is a permanent position.
3. This post can be offered as a role to be worked between four and five days per week, so 28 hours to 36 hours per week. We pride ourselves on our flexible working practices.
4. Leave entitlement for a full-time post is 25 days per year, plus 8 bank holidays, with the leave year running from January to December. This increases by 2 days after 3 years of service and a further 3 days after 5 years of service. QSA closes between Christmas and New Year and days falling within this period are not taken from your leave entitlement.
5. QSA pays an additional 6% of salary into the QSA group personal pension, with a 2% staff contributory element.
6. We have probationary periods of six months and the period of notice is 1 week during the probationary period and 8 weeks on its completion.
7. QSA has a union recognition agreement with Unite although staff are welcome to join any trade union or none.
8. This is a hybrid role. We see the benefits of being in the office with colleagues on a regular basis, and consider 2-3 days per week in person to be ideal for this role.
9. The successful candidate will be required to obtain a basic DBS check. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act applies.
10.  

“It was what I was looking for. The way they deliver the sessions makes it feel inclusive and non-judgemental. Participating online, the energy felt tranquil.”

- Audrey, online attendee of our This Way Up mindfulness and coaching course

Being a diverse and inclusive organisation is very important to us. We’re particularly focused on three elements of this: lived experience of poverty; race & heritage; and disability.  We actively encourage applications from candidates of diverse cultures, perspectives and lived experiences.

We hope that you find this job pack and our recruitment process clear and welcoming. Please let us know if this is not the case. We want to do recruitment well and feedback really helps.

Thank you for your interest in this role.

Role: Head of Communications, Marketing, & Digital

Location:Home-based, with regular attendance (at least monthly) of meetings in London.

Salary:                         £45,000-50,000 per annum. (Salary depends on experience and pro-rata for part-time). 

Type: Permanent, full time (37.5 hours per week) or flexible to at least 0.8 FTE

Responsible to: Director of Fundraising & Communications

Responsible for: Digital Marketing Manager, Communications & Engagement Manager, Communications Administrator (indirectly), Podcast Manager (indirectly)

Benefits: Flexible working arrangements, 28 days of annual leave and bank holidays (FTE pro-rata for part-time), + 1 day for your birthday, pension scheme and Employee Assistance Programme

About the role

Every five minutes, someone, somewhere in the world is told that they have MS. There are currently 2.9 million people in the world living with MS. When you’re diagnosed with MS, in just seconds, the future that you saw for yourself and your loved ones has been shattered. A diagnosis often comes at a time when you’re in the prime of your life, when you should be planning your future, not facing a lifetime of uncertainty. Knowing you have MS can feel incredibly isolating and lonely.

Overcoming MS is here to provide hope: through lifestyle changes, backed by scientific research, a full and healthy life with MS is possible.

Could you be the person that helps us get this message of hope through to thousands of people diagnosed each year, their families and friends? Overcoming MS is at a crucial point in our strategy, where we are ready to significantly expand our reach and let everyone affected by MS know about the support that is available for them to live well. We are ready to own the lifestyle and MS space, to offer hope, positivity and choices to all, and we’re looking for the right person to drive awareness of our brand profile as well as the wider importance of healthy lifestyle and MS.

Job summary:

The Head of Communications, Marketing & Digital is responsible for shaping, delivering, and evaluating the charity’s communications, brand, digital engagement, and marketing activity.

Reporting to the Director of Fundraising & Communications, the postholder plays a pivotal role in growing the charity’s profile, strengthening engagement, and ensuring all communication channels, platforms and content are effective, accessible, and aligned with organisational goals.

In a small charity, this is both a strategic and hands-on role, requiring creativity, strong digital skills, excellent communication, and the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.

Key responsibilities and duties:

1. Communications & brand

• Lead the delivery of the charity’s communications strategy to increase visibility, trust and engagement.
• Manage and protect the charity’s brand, ensuring consistency of messaging, tone, and visual identity.
• Oversee and produce high-quality content for website, newsletters, reports, blogs, case studies, and information materials.
• Support the Director in developing campaigns that unite messaging, fundraising, marketing, and advocacy.

2. Marketing & supporter engagement

• Lead marketing activity to grow audiences, increase engagement, increase participation in our services, and support fundraising objectives.
• Work closely with colleagues to create compelling campaign assets, supporter journeys, and integrated marketing plans.
• Develop marketing materials, key messages, and digital assets that support awareness, engagement, service numbers and income growth.

3. Digital leadership

• Oversee the charity’s digital ecosystem, including website, email marketing, social media and CRM integrations.
• Ensure digital content is accessible, user-focused, streamlined and optimised for engagement and conversion.
• Fully review website development and maintenance, including UX improvements, analytics, SEO, and content.
• Oversee data-led insights and dashboards to measure digital performance and inform decision-making.

4. Media & public relations

• Build media relationships and respond to press requests in coordination with the Director.
• Draft press releases, statements, Q&As, and key messages for external audiences.
• Support reactive and crisis communications, ensuring timely, accurate responses and reputational protection.

5. Internal communication & collaboration

• Support effective internal communication, ensuring staff team, Program Facilitators and volunteers are informed and engaged.
• Work collaboratively across teams to gather stories, insights, and content that bring the charity’s work to life.
• Provide guidance and support to colleagues on communications, brand, and digital best practice.

6. Other

• Manage agency and supplier relationships where relevant.
• Stay informed about sector trends and emerging tools that could benefit the charity.

PERSON SPECIFICATION
 

Essential experience

• Significant experience in communications, marketing and digital roles, preferably within a charity or mission-driven organisation.
• Proven track record of developing and delivering digital and communications content across multiple platforms to multiple audiences.
• Experience managing websites, CRM systems, email marketing tools, and social media channels.
• Demonstrable experience in audience engagement, digital analytics, and campaign performance measurement.
• Experience in managing a brand profile across different audiences and different products, ensuring consistency and authority over time.
• Hands-on experience creating accessible and compelling written, visual, and digital content.
• Experience working with agencies, freelancers, or creative suppliers.

Essential skills & competencies

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to craft clear, compelling messages.
• Creative, strategic thinker with the ability to translate ideas into practical delivery.
• Highly organised, able to manage multiple deadlines, and comfortable working independently in a small team.
• Strong attention to detail with a commitment to quality and accuracy.
• Strong understanding of brand management and visual communication.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of fundraising, communications, GDPR, safeguarding, accessibility and other standards.

Personal attributes

• Passionate about the charity’s mission and values.
• Collaborative, positive, and comfortable working closely with colleagues across the organisation.
• Proactive problem solver who brings ideas and embraces innovation.
• Adaptable and resilient in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
• Commitment to inclusivity, accessibility, and ethical communication.
• Excellent standard of written and spoken English and ability to communicate effectively with a range of people from diverse backgrounds.
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Fully committed to Overcoming MS’s values.