Head of Development
Department: Development
Line Manager: Director of Audiences and Growth
Reports From: Development Officer, Freelance Bid Writer
Salary: £43,000 - £52,500
The Belgrade theatre has big growth plans with a vibrant programme; we are proud of our reputation for excellent stewardship and donor care. We are a National Portfolio Organisation, funded by Arts Council England, and enjoy the support of many individuals, trust and foundations and corporate supporters. We are now looking for an ambitious, creative, and energetic fundraiser to help take us into our next chapter. You might be an experienced Development leader or someone looking to take that next step, or perhaps this could be a lateral move from another related sector. We are open to discussing flexible working patterns, and you will be able to shape the role around your particular skills and experience.
You will have the full support of the CEO, senior team and Board of Trustees, and we will work with you to ensure you continue to develop in your professional practice. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that your work is making a real difference in supporting the Belgrade Theatre realise its Story of Change and continue to build on our co-creation model of developing theatre by and with the people of Coventry.
You will be joining us at an exciting time whilst we build the production of our new co-created show Nanny of the Maroons, and your skills and expertise in fundraising and income-generation activity, will support us to launch this production in a way that can have real impact for the people of Coventry; whilst shaping a sustainable future for the organisation, and achieving an annual revenue funding target of £450K.
This is a hands-on role focused on delivering fundraising activity, supporting income generation through campaigns, events, partnerships and donor stewardship. You will build meaningful relationships with donors, partners, and funders, working on strategies that support artistic ambition, creative learning and community engagement programmes, and long-term organisational growth.
This role will suit someone who is organised, proactive and confident in delivering fundraising activity, and who can bring practical ideas that connect with Coventry’s diverse communities.
Key Working Relationships:
Internal: Director of Audiences and Growth, CEO, Artistic Director and Director of Producing and Co-creation. This role will line manage the Development Officer and oversee freelance bid writers. This role needs to have constructive relationships with all departments within the business including working closely with the audiences, marketing and communications team and colleagues across Box Office, Finance and Front of House. You will deliver a programme of fundraising activity including memberships, small, mid-scale and larger trusts and foundations, community fundraising, sponsorship and local business partnerships.
External: Trusts and Foundations, Donors, High Net worth individuals, Members, Individual Giving, Stakeholders, Volunteers and Business Networks
Key Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership
- Develop and deliver a multi-year fundraising strategy aligned with organisational priorities
- Lead on income diversification across individual giving/membership, major gifts, legacies, trusts and foundations, corporate partnerships, campaigns and events
- Set and monitor annual income targets with clear KPIs and reporting structure
Fundraising Campaigns & Income Generation
- Develop and deliver audience-focused fundraising campaigns that support theatre programming, community engagement and audience development.
- Identify and implement practical income opportunities, such as round-up donations, maximising Gift Aid and testing messaging at key audience touchpoints.
Events & Community Fundraising
- Plan, promote and deliver fundraising events including donor evenings and follow up donor cultivation, community fundraising activities and donor profile events
- Work collaboratively with colleagues and volunteers to ensure events are well organised and provide a positive supporter experience.
Trusts, Memberships & Partnerships
- Research, write and submit applications to small, mid-scale and large trusts and foundations aligned with The Belgrade’s artistic, co-creation, educational and community activity to ensure we meet our target of 10% of turnover against fundraising activity
- Review and refresh The Belgrade’s s membership schemes, sponsorship offers and local business fundraising opportunities.
- Develop proposals to support income from individuals, trusts and community partners.
- Establish and Develop a Legacy programme with the associated campaign
Donor Stewardship & Supporter Care
- Support and steward donors, members and supporters through appropriate communication, recognition and reporting.
- Ensure donor recognition is accurate and visible across digital, print and in-venue materials.
- Experience of managing a varied pipeline of fundraising prospects, including identification of key internal and external milestones
Digital Fundraising & Communications
- Work with the Marketing team to create fundraising content for email, web and social media.
- Use storytelling to promote THE BELGRADE ’s charitable activity and encourage supporter engagement.
Monitoring, Reporting & Compliance
- Maintain accurate donor records.
- Track fundraising income and prepare reports for internal and external stakeholders.
- Ensure all fundraising activity complies with GDPR, Gift Aid requirements and Fundraising Regulator guidance.
Planning, Collaboration & Good Practice
- Contribute to the delivery of agreed annual fundraising plans, supporting our Audiences and Marketing team by tracking activity and progress against targets.
- Stay informed about THE BELGRADE ’s artistic programme and community work, working with colleagues across departments to support clear and relevant case for support.
- Build and maintain networks with fundraising colleagues in the arts and charity sectors, sharing learning and good practice with THE BELGRADE particularly at a local and regional level
- Contribute positively to THE BELGRADE ’s inclusive, collaborative and community-focused culture, supporting volunteers involved in fundraising activity where appropriate.
- Set company wide strategies to maximise individual giving around our Making Memories campaign for Pantomime and our Stage for All campaign that supports co-creation.
General
- Keep up to date with emerging technologies and industry trends to improve efficiency and fundraising potential.
- Maintain a strong applicable knowledge of the theatre’s programme, strategy and business plan.
- Attend staff meetings / training as required.
- Adhere to policies and procedures and act as an ambassador for best practice.
What Success Looks Like
- Reaching our fundraising target of £450k
- Growth in philanthropic income year-on-year
- Strong donor engagement, both recruitment and retention
- Increase in size and diversity of membership base including renewal of lapsed bookers
- A motivated, high-performing development team
- Clear, compelling fundraising messaging around The Belgrade’s case for support embedded across the organisation
- A sustainable funding model that supports artistic excellence and community impact
The postholder will be required to work from the theatre in Coventry, although some flexibility for occasional working from home is available subject to the needs of the business. This role may require working weekends and evenings for attendance at Guest Nights and Stakeholder Events etc. from time to time for which time off can be taken in lieu.
Please note the job description for this position may be reviewed and amended to incorporate future business needs.
Person Specification:
Essential - the successful candidate will meet the majority of these requirements.
- Experience delivering fundraising campaigns.
- Experience stewarding and supporting donors or supporters.
- Experience writing successful funding applications.
- Experience planning and delivering fundraising or community events.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Understanding of fundraising compliance, including GDPR and Gift Aid.
- Awareness of current fundraising trends and inclusive fundraising practices.
- Proactive, organised and hands-on approach.
- Confidence building and maintaining professional relationships with a range of stakeholders
- Commitment to inclusivity, ethical fundraising and community values.
- Collaborative, adaptable and solution focused.
- Experience cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding donors or supporters
- Experience using CRM or database systems to manage supporter data
- Willingness to embrace the Belgrade’s Brand Values
- A genuine interest in inclusive arts, music and social impact
Desirable
- Experience of developing new fundraising initiatives from conception to realisation
- Experience of budget responsibility and reporting on achievements against targets
- Knowledge and experience of major gift fundraising
Apply Now
Upload your CV and Cover Letter
In your cover letter, tell us:
- Why you want to work for The Belgrade Theatre?
- What experiences and skills do you have that you feel will illustrate your suitability for the role
Our Commitment to Equality
The Belgrade Theatre is proud to be a Disability Confident Employer and is deeply committed to fostering an inclusive, welcoming, and supportive environment for everyone. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences—including but not limited to individuals of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, ages, faiths or beliefs, disabilities, and neurodiverse conditions.
We believe that a diverse workforce enriches our creative community and strengthens our connection to the audiences we serve. Our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion is at the heart of everything we do, and we strive to ensure that all employees and applicants feel valued, respected, and empowered to bring their full selves to work.
If you require any adjustments, accommodations, or assistance at any stage of the recruitment or application process, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will work with you to provide the support you need to make your application journey as accessible and comfortable as possible.
If you are applying through the Disability Confident Scheme, please reference that in your cover letter or application
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FORM
The Belgrade Theatre is committed to ensuring equal opportunities, aiming to attract and work with staff from a wide diverse pool. The information that you give us on this form will be treated confidentially and stored on our HR database as statistical information only. This will be used to help monitor the diversity of applicants and to enable us to continue to develop policies and procedures regarding diversity and to submit required data to our funders. The information you supply will not be made available to anyone in any form other than anonymous data.
At the Belgrade Theatre, we are dedicated to creating an environment where everyone has equal opportunity to thrive and contribute to telling powerful, diverse stories that reflect us
as a vibrant community.
Registered Charity 
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Actively Interviewing
This organisation is scheduling interviews as applications come in. They're ready to hire as soon as they find the right person. Don't miss your opportunity, apply now!
About us
Carers UK’s vision is to create a society that recognises, values and supports carers. As the leading national charity for unpaid carers, we exist to make life better for carers, however caring affects them. Our support, advice, information and campaigning work are now needed more than ever, as unpaid carers are providing more and more care, adversely impacting on their own health and wellbeing.
About the role
We recognise the value of social media in communicating with all our audiences; whether unpaid carers or their friends and families, employers, politicians, service providers, supporters and all those people who may become a carer for a partner, family member, friend or neighbour and will need information, support, and to know that there are people working to make their lives better.
This role works with colleagues across the organisation - but also in partnership with external organisations and agencies, with targets set for engagement (and other indicators of the success of our campaigns). We're working on multiple campaigns simultaneously; whether that's Carers Week, campaigns to influence changes to the law to better support carers, encouraging unpaid carers to join us as members, updating on activities in the devolved nations or getting people to fundraise for Carers UK. And we use a mix of owned, earned and paid communications to drive engagement in a challenging and crowded environment in order to get our messages to cut through. It's a busy, but varied role, in a supportive and collaborative team.
About you
Working within the communications and marketing team, you'll be confident in managing our social media accounts (we have many), ensuring we're using platforms to get our messages out to both wide and targeted audiences with engaging and timely content.
You'll be happy using tools for social listening, interacting with our audiences and building our reach. You'll be familiar with key metrics for social engagement and will be reporting back to colleagues and other stakeholders - and using this data to constantly improve our communications.
You'll be skilled in writing longer form content for our members' magazine, Caring, proof reading articles, posting content on our websites, creating graphics and making sure our content is engaging, audience focused and dynamic. Oh, and you probably know your way around an emoji set and are not scared of a well timed pun. We're a small but effective communications team and pride ourselves on getting stuck in and supporting each other when we need to deliver big on fast moving projects, so you'll need be able to juggle lots of demands while recognising the importance of always hitting deadlines.
Diversity and inclusion
Carers UK is committed to becoming a diverse and truly inclusive organisation. We strive to create a workplace where our colleagues and volunteers can truly be themselves and feel like they belong and constantly seek to ensure all voices are heard.
To embrace this culture of diversity, our employee and volunteer recruitment should reflect our stakeholders and the society that we serve and support, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, disabilities or religious practices. We value individual diversity and are actively building diverse teams here at Carers UK and value our colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds.
As a membership charity for carers, we particularly seek employees and volunteers with a real understanding of the issues faced by carers. Reasonable adjustments can be made to the process and role dependent on the needs of the applicant.
At Carers UK we want our application process to be as accessible as possible. If you need any adjustments to apply please contact us to discuss.
The closing date for applications is 5pm, Tuesday 7 April.
Carers UK anonymises all applications prior to shortlisting.
Carers UK reserves the right to appoint at any stage, should an outstanding candidate emerge.
Carers UK are actively interviewing as we receive applications.
Carers UK may carry out online and social media checks before a formal offer is made.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Thank you!
As our Individual Giving Officer, you will join an energetic team and play a pivotal role in leading the marketing, delivery, development, and stewardship of NHYC's Individual Giving programme. This includes managing direct marketing acquisition and retention campaigns, developing new propositions, and expanding our reach to new audiences.
You will be responsible for managing existing activity, marketing channels and audiences, and at the same time identifying and developing exciting propositions targeted at new and existing audiences. Through your effective onboarding, retention, and engagement plans, you will ensure that our donors maximise their fundraising potential and have a great experience supporting NHYC. We have a very data-led individual giving program and as part of your role you will support with the data management that underpins not only individual giving, but our wider fundraising infrastructure.
Within this role you will get lots of autonomy, the opportunity to learn, develop and progress, and raise much-needed funds for our work supporting young people experiencing homelessness. Working from our bustling day centre, you'll be at the heart of our operations, staying connected to the profound impact of our organisation firsthand.
This closeness to our frontline services ensures that you'll witness the tangible difference your fundraising efforts make in the lives of young people every day, making New Horizon Youth Centre an energising place to fundraise.
If you're seeking not just a job but a deeply fulfilling experience where your work directly transforms lives, where you'll forge lasting connections with funders, colleagues, and the young people we support, then New Horizon Youth Centre is for you. Join us in making a difference and shape a brighter future for the young people experiencing homelessness in London.
Key details:
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Salary: £31,200.00 - £34,736.00
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Application deadline: 9am, Thursday 2nd April 2026
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How to apply: complete our application form, submit your CV and write a 2 page cover letter/supporting statement. Please don't include your name or address in your CV or cover letter.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.