Head of engagement jobs in Charing cross, greater london

Job Title: Head of Public Fundraising & Engagement

Reporting To: Executive Director of Fundraising

Salary Range: Up to £60,000

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Hybrid, across London sites. Old Street, Canary Wharf & Poplar.

Working days/hours per week: 35 per week, 9am – 5pm

Our Vision: A UK where “No good food goes to waste”. 

The Felix Project and FareShare have recently merged to form the UK's largest food redistribution charity. Its vision is a UK where good food is never wasted, and nobody goes hungry.

The organisation rescues high quality edible surplus food, from across the food industry and gets it to over 8,000 organisations across the UK who are working to strengthen communities and improve lives.

The charity manages seven depots across London, Suffolk, Merseyside and Hampshire and works with 16 network partners who operate a further 26 regional depots across the UK.

Over the next year our ambition is to rescue enough food nationally to provide nearly 200 million meals, turning an environmental problem into social good with measurable impact for people, planet, and the economy.

Why this role and why now?

This is a hugely exciting time to join our organisation.

We have recently brought together two £20m organisations – FareShare UK, a national food redistribution charity, and The Felix Project, our London network partner who has made waves across the capital in recent years. We are in the early stages of shaping our future together, while at the same time, developing our fundraising strategy for the next three years – setting the direction for how we grow income, engage supporters and deliver even more impact across the UK.

Public fundraising and engagement will be central to that strategy, and as Head of Public Fundraising & Engagement, you will play a leading role in shaping it.

We already have strong foundations to build on. Recent testing of private site fundraising for both organisations has exceeded KPIs, showing strong public appetite to support our work. We also have the opportunity to learn from The Felix Project’s success in London and explore how proven approaches can be adapted and scaled nationally.

Alongside this, we have a clear ambition to become a destination directorate for fundraisers across the sector – a place where talented people want to build their careers, test new ideas and do their best work.

This newly created role offers a rare opportunity to build on that momentum: helping to shape our three-year fundraising strategy, embedding a new brand, working creatively with network partners, developing new products and propositions, scaling what works nationally, growing mass-market and legacy fundraising, modernising systems and supporter journeys, and bringing together newly merged teams around a shared direction and culture.

This is a role for someone who enjoys building, experimenting, learning from what works and creating something genuinely transformational. If you’re excited by the idea of leading through change and helping create new ways for people to support our cause, we’d love to hear from you.

About the role

The Head of Public Fundraising & Engagement will lead our public fundraising portfolio. This newly created role will oversee Individual Giving and Legacies, Community Fundraising, Mass Participation and Challenge Events, and Fundraising Operations, with five direct reports.

You will be accountable for public fundraising income and performance, whilst also helping to bring together teams, systems and ways of working following the merger. You’ll sit on both the Fundraising Senior Management Team and the organisation’s Senior Management Team, contributing to organisation-wide strategy, decision-making and culture.

You will play a key role in shaping our three-year public fundraising strategy, ensuring it is ambitious, realistic and rooted in audience insight.

Whilst much of the portfolio is delivered through Senior Managers, there is particular scope and opportunity, to shape the future of Community and Mass Fundraising – where we’ve deliberately protected delivery while leaving space for the new Head to define long-term strategy, growth and resource.

You’ll also play a leading role in embedding a new organisational brand once agreed.

What you’ll be responsible for

•Setting direction and growing income

•Champion the growth of long-term sustainable income that supports the organisation’s 3–5-year income ambitions.

•Strengthen our regular giving proposition and performance, embedding a clear strategy for acquisition, retention and lifetime value growth.

•Shape and deliver the organisation’s three-year public fundraising strategy.

•Set the overall direction for public fundraising and lead its delivery.

•Be accountable for public fundraising income, including planning, budgets, forecasting and performance working alongside your Senior Managers and Managers to achieve this.

•Build on strong early signals of public support, including the face-to-face fundraising pilots.

•Learn from proven success from both legacy organisations, including The Felix Project’s fundraising in London, and explore how this can be scaled nationally.

•Drive sustainable growth across the portfolio, balancing short-term delivery with the need to maximise supporter lifetime value.

•Make clear, confident decisions about priorities, investment and risk.

Leading the public fundraising portfolio

•Lead and support Senior Managers and Managers across Individual Giving, Community and Mass, Legacies and Fundraising Operations.

•Bring different income streams together under a joined-up, supporter-centered approach.

•Encourage collaboration, testing and learning across teams.

•Step in where needed to resolve issues, reset direction or move things forward.

A focus on Fundraising Operations

•Provide strategic oversight of Fundraising Operations, ensuring excellent supporter care, compliant processes and efficient income processing across the portfolio.

•Integrate a ‘best in class’ approach to thanking and supporter stewardship across the portfolio.

•Ensure robust fundraising compliance in line with regulation and sector best practice.

•Champion operational excellence, embedding processes and systems that enable sustainable growth.

•Work closely with the Senior Fundraising Operations Manager to ensure visibility and value of the function across the directorate and wider organisation.

Innovation and new product development

•Work collaboratively with colleagues to shape and embed the organisation’s innovation framework within public fundraising, ensuring disciplined testing, learning and scaling.

•Contribute a public fundraising perspective to cross-organisational and directorate innovation priorities, ensuring opportunities are commercially viable and audience-led.

•Lead the development of new fundraising products, propositions and approaches, from ideas through to testing and scale.

•Explore new ways for people to engage and give – particularly in acquisition-led activity such as face-to-face, digital and mass fundraising.

•Use insight, data and supporter feedback to shape and refine new ideas.

•Balance creativity with a commercial mindset i.e. Stopping what doesn’t work and scaling what does.

Shaping Community and Mass Fundraising

•    Make a hands-on strategic lead in shaping the future direction of Community and Mass Fundraising.

•Build on recent business planning that has protected delivery whilst leaving space for longer-term strategic choices.

•    Identify growth opportunities and test new approaches to help define future operating models.

•Build momentum and organisational confidence in areas with significant untapped potential.

•Increase partnerships with small and medium-sized corporates within Community Fundraising, developing scalable propositions that can grow nationally, working in partnership with network partners.

Working with our network partners

•Play a leading role in shaping how we fundraise with, for and alongside our network partners in the public fundraising space, working closely with the Senior Network Fundraising Manager.

•Work collaboratively to explore ideas, test approaches and unlock opportunities that benefit both the network and the organisation.

•Ensure public fundraising activity reflects the stories and impact of our network partners in a respectful and sensitive way.

Developing high-potential partnerships

•Lead the strategic development of high-profile partnerships including our newly launched three-year partnership with Nectar.

•Work closely with internal teams and external partners to grow reach, impact and value over time.

•Develop and embed a robust a partnership strategy for within public fundraising, to ensure we are maximising opportunities with third party providers.

Shaping our legacy fundraising proposition

•Take a strategic lead in developing our legacy fundraising approach, working closely with the Senior IG & Legacy Manager.

•Shape a compelling legacy proposition linked to our impact, values and volunteer workforce – an area of untapped potential.

•Ensure legacy fundraising asks are integrated into wider supporter journeys and long term planning.

•Build organisational confidence, capability and momentum in this area over time.

Brand embedding and supporter acquisition

•Play a leading role in embedding the new organisational brand across all public fundraising activity once agreed.

•Work closely with colleagues in Marketing & Communications to ensure fundraising needs are reflected in the new brand as it develops over time.

•Support your team to translate brand strategy into practical, high-performing fundraising activity.

Merger transition and CRM

•Play a senior role in the organisation’s merger transition, with particular focus on the Fundraising Transition, working closely with the Fundraising Transition Lead, ensuring that public fundraising’s priorities are reflected in change planning.

•Act as the senior fundraising lead for the implementation of a combined CRM, ensuring public fundraising needs shape system design, data structure, reporting and supporter journeys.

•Work closely with colleagues in digital, data and IT, as well as external partners, to ensure systems support future growth and great supporter experiences.

•Balance business-as-usual income delivery with the demands of transformation and change.

•Help modernise processes and ways of working so the organisation can scale effectively.

Leadership and culture

•Lead and develop Senior Managers and Managers, creating a supportive, inclusive, high-performing and psychologically safe culture.

•Play an active role in shaping organisational culture following the merger.

•Support teams through change with clarity, empathy and pace.

•   Help build our reputation as a great place to work for fundraisers – where people feel supported, challenged, proud and able to grow.

•Role model collaborative, values-led leadership.

Organisation-wide leadership

•   Attend organisation SMT meetings.

•Contribute to organisation-wide strategy, decision-making and problem-solving.

•Work collaboratively with senior colleagues across the organisation.

•Be a strong, credible voice and advocate for public fundraising internally and externally.