The Youth Endowment Fund
Youth Voice & Project Officer
Reports to: Youth Understanding Manager (Programmes)
Salary: £32,300
Contract: 2-year fixed term (potential to extend)
Location: Central London, Hybrid – 2 days in the office
Closing date for applications: 09:00am, Wednesday 22nd May 2024
Interview dates: week commencing the 3rd June 2024
About the Youth Endowment Fund
We’re here to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice.
In recent years violent crime has risen significantly. Homicides, assaults, robberies and offences involving weapons have all seen sustained growth. We have also seen large increases in violent crime involving children and young people. This is a tragedy. Every child captured in these numbers is an important member of our community and society has a duty to protect them.
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a £200m endowment and a mission that matters. We exist to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by funding great initiatives, finding what works and working for change – scaling up and spreading the practices that make a difference.
This role and why it’s important
It's critical to our mission that we understand how and why young people become involved in violence. The YEF’s work combines conducting rigorous evaluations and research studies with hearing directly from young people. It is also important to us that young people are central to the messages we share externally.
Your role involves ensuring that young people’s perspectives are heard and integrated into our work. This includes supporting our Youth Advisory Board (YAB) and helping young people’s voices play a central part in YEFs external communications.
This role also supports the wider team managing grants, contracts and providing general team support.
Click to learn more about the Youth Advisory Board (YAB). Many have lived experience of violence and advise us across all areas of our work to ensure that young people’s perspectives are taken on board as we pursue our mission. YAB members contribute to the governance of the organisation.
Key responsibilities:
1. Youth Advisory Board support:
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Plan engaging activities for YAB meetings and events. These activities require working some evenings and occasional weekends.
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Provide support and pastoral care to YAB members, including personal development planning and safeguarding.
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Help recruit YAB members (young people aged 16 –25) through interviews and managing recruitment.
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Develop and schedule the YAB induction programme for new members.
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Monitor attendance and engagement of YAB members.
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Coordinate YAB attendance at external events.
2. Facilitating Youth Voice in communications:
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Act as a bridge between the YAB and our external communications team.
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Work with the communications team to amplify young people's voices on social media.
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Assist young people in sharing their views and stories through various communication methods.
3. Managing grants and contracts:
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Maintain records of payments and tasks using Salesforce.
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Assist stakeholders and team members in using Salesforce effectively.
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Support in procurement processes and grant management by organising documents and scheduling meetings.
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Proactively identify and address issues.
4. Collaboration and support:
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Work closely with other roles (including our Operations and Culture team) within YEF to ensure coordinated efforts and sharing of best practices.
About you -you’re the sort of person:
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You believe in young people: You have worked with young people and know the huge potential young people have to bring change. You have experience and knowledge of adhering to safeguarding processes, and are able to be flexible to suit young people’s needs - understanding when plans need to change at short notice.
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You’re passionate about helping young people to be heard: You have some experience in using media/social media to tell young people’s stories and are keen to learn more.
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You’re able to juggle many diverse tasks at once: You enjoy moving between different types of projects, whether that be leading YAB sessions, supporting the development of young people one-to-one or creating exciting content with young people. You prefer a job that looks different every day. You don’t get overwhelmed by a long to-do list and can effectively identify what’s most important and how to balance different priorities.
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You’re brilliant at improving and organising things: You like finding ways to make things operate better for everyone. You enjoy bringing order to what is going on. You’re good at getting your head around how a process works and improving it. It’s a plus if you’ve used the Salesforce system before, but not a requirement.
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You love supporting great teams: You’ll be happy to support beyond your immediate team, using your organising skills to support the wider organisation. You don’t know all the answers, but you enjoy helping colleagues find answers and solve problems so that the team can work brilliantly and efficiently.
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You don't want your days to pass without making a difference. You want to play a significant part in a charity that’s making a difference. You like the idea of doing a job that makes young people safer.
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You’re committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. You believe and act in a way that celebrates and encourages a range of experiences, views and values.
While it’s not a criteria, we’re especially interested to hear from applicants who have lived experience of youth violence.
It’s also important to us that the people we hire do not discriminate. We believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background.
Additional benefits include
£1,000 professional development budget annually, 28 days plus Bank Holidays, four half days for volunteering activities.
Hybrid working details
Our offices are based on Great Eastern Street in Central London. The post holder will be expected to be in office 2 days per week.
If you’re interested
To apply, please send a CV and cover letter, and complete the monitoring form via our application website by 9am Wednesday 22nd May 2024.
Please ensure that your cover letter can answer, within a maximum of 1000 words, the following questions:
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Please share why YEF’s mission is motivating you to apply for this role.
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Referring to the 'About You' section on the JD, give clear examples of:
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How your work shows that “You believe in young people” and
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How “you’re able to juggle many diverse tasks at once”
You should also include the contact details of two referees, one of whom must be your current or most recent employer. Referees will only be approached with your express permission.
This role is advertised as full time at 37.5hrs per week. As part of our commitment to flexible working, we will consider a range of options for the successful applicant. All options can be discussed at interview stage.
You will also be required to provide proof of your eligibility to work in the UK.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
About the Youth Endowment Fund
We’re here to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice.
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a £200m endowment and a mission that matters. We exist to prevent children becoming involved in violence. We do this by funding great initiatives, leading cutting-edge research and working for change - scaling up and spreading the practices that make a difference.
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) has a critical role in ensuring we succeed in this work. You have a key leadership role in overseeing the overall health of the Fund in partnership with the Executive Director. The role oversees our finances, people management and – for the right candidate –much of our grant-making and project management.
Key responsibilities
You’ll lead on key organisational governance processes and ensure the Fund makes wise decisions, by:
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Being a leading member of our Directors’ team, overseeing all elements of the Fund’s work.
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Ensuring that the Fund operates as efficiently and effectively as possible by prioritising the right activities and matching resources to deliver on our mission.
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Ensuring we have the right long, medium and short-term financial plans in place and that we maintain close control over our financial decisions and spend.
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Informing our Board and our Risk and Audit Committee on our financial performance and risk.
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Ensuring the Fund’s investments are well managed through supporting the Endowment Investment Committee (this does not require investment experience).
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Managing our Grants and Evaluation Committee (this decides which evaluations we should fund) and ensuring it operates effectively.
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Ensuring that any ambiguities in the organisation are identified and removed.
You make sure that the Fund has the people, tools and resources in place to excel. This will require us to:
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Hire, develop and inspire the very best people: Managing our Head of People, you will ensure that we hire the best possible staff, compensate them appropriately, provide necessary and effective training, maintain a strong focus on staff well-being, manage and develop staff effectively and address poor performance when required.
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Provide staff with the tools they need to perform: Managing our Head of Grant Operations, you will ensure that we have the tools we need to deliver, including management information, databases, systems and processes and office facilities.
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Track performance: Track performance against our goals efficiently and effectively, championing a system of accountability and action to review, identify and empower the right people to act on delivering according to the plan.
Working with colleagues, you’ll ensure we award grants, manage grantees and oversee evaluations efficiently and effectively. This will require us to:
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Make excellent decisions about our grants: Working with – and potentially managing1 - the Assistant Director for Programmes, Impact and Partnerships, you will help to ensure that our processes for assessing funding applications achieve our organisational priorities for evidence generation. This requires you to understand what partners are trying to do, whether it’s likely to work, whether it will help us build an accessible and trusted body of knowledge, and whether we can build on it to make long-term change happen.
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Evaluate our programmes: Working with - and potentially managing - the Assistant Director of Evaluation, you will help to ensure that we select and partner with high-quality evaluators to understand how well different activities work.
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Ensuring the team maintains effective monitoring processes: Working with your team, you will develop the necessary skills, processes and decision-making processes to identify when things aren’t going to plan and respond accordingly.
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Build strong relationships with your external partners: You and your team will build strong, trusting relationships with the projects the YEF funds and the evaluators that we work with. Your team will be known for being attentive yet assertive and measured and efficient in the reporting information we expect. You will become well connected in the sectors that we are working in.
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Identify opportunities to scale up projects: You will be proactive in identifying projects that would benefit from capacity development support or that may be ready to scale up their work, collaborating with Impetus to deliver on this.
In support of these goals you will also
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Lead and build a team that is so much more than the sum of its parts: Working with your direct reports you will build a culture that brings the very best of the different skill sets and approaches in your team. You will lead this team, providing exceptional direction, culture and clarity.
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Make it easy to be effective when working in your team: You will bring clarity, lean processes, clear accountabilities, timely decision-making and effective systems so that people working in your team comment on how easy it is to get things done.
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See your primary team as the Directors team: As a core member of the Directors team, you will be part of making the most important decisions about the short-term and long-term strategy of the Fund. You will build and model the culture and values that we need to make a real difference. You will leave ego at home and look to make the rest of this team a great success.
Person specification
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You are excellent at leading on finance in an organisation: You find it easy and straightforward to develop and oversee, large organisational budgets and ensure timely preparation of management accounts. You’re excellent at financial forecasting and understand how to make judgements and recommendations based on future scenario planning. You have experience reporting to Boards on financial performance and health, and leading on organisational external audits.
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You are strategic about finance: You’ve got real skill in distilling complex financial information into simple, easy to understand reports and presentations that enable good decision-making. You see your knowledge of finance as a way to serve Director-level colleagues with overall decision-making. You also understand how to navigate competing priorities and how to calculate and articulate risk and reward, knowing few decisions are straightforward.
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You get teams to use data well: You understand that accurate data and excellent management information tools enable good decision-making. You understand how management information databases (like Salesforce) work and would be able to maintain and build a culture of recording data and maintaining data quality within big teams. Ideally, you have experience working directly with Salesforce.
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You get things done and are brilliant at improving things: In previous jobs, you have held significant responsibility for ensuring challenging projects are delivered on time. You like finding ways to make things operate better for everyone. You are excellent at designing and putting in place effective systems and processes.
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You are a low ego and effective leader: You have a track record of building and leading effective teams. You are thoughtful about how to get a team working well and people tend to warm to you and respect you. You are not afraid of managing someone brighter and better than you or of addressing poor performance. You leave ego at home. You work very well in a team. You like taking responsibility for things. You can balance the task, the individual and the team.
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You are interested and experienced in both staff development and financial planning: You are equally at home thinking about the processes and approach we need to recruit and develop great staff as you are thinking about how we control our expenditure and report our finances.
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You learn fast but remain humble: You are quick at getting your head around things. It wouldn't faze you to have responsibility for organising things that are new to you as long as you have an expert to ask advice from. You like learning and developing. You know how much you don't know as well as what you do.
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You are interested and thoughtful about grant-making and evaluation: You may not be an expert in grant-making, but you have experience of how charities think and approach applications for money. You have enough cynicism to know how these things can go wrong, but not so much that you can’t make them go right. You may not be an expert in evaluation, but you care about finding out what works.
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You are an excellent strategic thinker: People say that you are good at seeing the big picture as well as the detail. You have experience of wrestling into place a strategy for a project or organisation. You would be able to describe the strategy of the work you are leading at the moment. You are able to see things from different points of view.
While it’s not a criteria, we’re especially interested to hear from applicants who have lived experience of youth violence.
It’s also important to us that the people we hire do not discriminate. We believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background.
All appointments will be made on merit, following a fair and transparent process. In line with the Equality Act 2010, however, the organisation may employ positive action where candidates from underrepresented groups can demonstrate their ability to perform the role equally well.
Additional benefits include
£1,000 professional development budget annually, 28 days plus Bank Holidays, four half days for volunteering activities.
If you’re interested
To apply, please send a CV and cover letter, and complete the monitoring form click on "Apply for this job" button by 5pm, Friday 31st May 2024.
We will plan to host the first round of interviews the week commencing the 3rd June 2024.
You’ll be required to provide proof of your eligibility to work in the UK. As part of our commitment to flexible working we will consider a range of options for the successful applicant. All options can be discussed at the interview stage.
Your data
Your personal data will be shared for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes our HR team, interviewers (who may include other partners in the project and independent advisors), relevant team managers and our IT service provider if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles. We do not share your data with other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you. We do not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.
The people we are looking for do not discriminate and we believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
About you
Do you want to use your skills to make a real difference to the myeloma community?
We’re looking for a talented and enthusiastic Scientific Knowledge and Communications Officer who has a passion for delivering high quality scientific information to a range of different audiences. You’ll have excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to make complex information engaging and accessible. You’ll require strong organisational skills and the ability to prioritise and manage your workload to meet strict deadlines.
About the role
This is an exciting time to join Myeloma UK as we launch our new five year strategy.
The post holder will be responsible for developing evidence led scientific communications that help engage new audiences as we aim to reach new people as part of our strategic goals. You will use your science communication expertise to bring our research and scientific information to life for a variety of audiences from people affected by myeloma to health care professionals as well as scientists and researchers.
You will support other teams across Myeloma UK by helping to develop engaging evidence led impactful communications that can be used for appeals, case for support and other activities. You’ll also work with our research and health care professional community to engage and involve them in our communications activities.
About us
Myeloma UK is the only organisation in the UK dealing exclusively with the blood cancer myeloma and related conditions. We are committed to bringing together the best and brightest people to help us ensure that every patient has an empowered present and a hopeful future.
Our ultimate goal is to find a cure and make myeloma history. Until then, our mission is to help every patient live well with myeloma for as long as possible. We are committed to diagnosing myeloma earlier, discovering and sharing knowledge, transforming the patient experience and influencing positive change in care.
Our culture
Wellbeing and staff engagement are at the heart of our culture.
We offer flexible working and flexitime to allow you to find the right working pattern for you. We have a Staff Engagement Group who work with us to ensure staff are happy and who help us review and update our benefits. We offer an employee assistance program and our Wellbeing Leads are there always here to support our staff.
How to apply
If you think you would be a great fit for this role, get in touch and tell us more about yourself by sending us the following :
1. A cover letter telling us more about you and what you think makes you a good fit for this role
2. A CV that sets out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements
Applications close on 20 May 2024 and interviews will be held w/c 27 May 2024. You may be asked to do a task prior to your interview.
Myeloma UK is an equal opportunities employer and always welcomes applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of:
· sex,
· race,
· disability,
· age,
· sexual orientation,
· gender reassignment,
· religion or belief, marital status, or pregnancy and maternity.
Please note, you will be asked to provide evidence of your eligibility to work in the UK prior to interview selection.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.