We are looking for an interim Head of Legacies, In Memory and Supporter Care to play a vital role in strengthening the supporter experiences and relationships that help power our lifesaving work.
This is a 12 month offering a rare opportunity to step into a leadership role where you’ll help shape and deliver our Legacy, In Memory and Supporter Care programmes. You’ll put insight, compassion and supporter needs at the heart of everything we do. You will lead a talented team to inspire people to give in meaningful ways, deepen their connection with our cause, and help us grow sustainable income that ensures we can be here for anyone who needs us.
We're looking for someone who can drive our ambitious plans to grow our legacy income. Working collaboratively across teams and directorates, particularly Data, Finance and External Engagement, making sure our strategies are based on insight and are effective in communicating the need.
With significant direct marketing experience, ideally across legacy and in memory fundraising, strong leadership capability and a passion for exceptional supporter care, you’ll bring the expertise and energy needed to help us reach new audiences and build long lasting supporter relationships.
If you’re driven by purpose, motivated by insight and inspired by the chance to make a real difference, we’d love you to join us.
Contract terms:
- £55,000 - £60,000 per annum, plus benefits
- 12 month fixed term contract (maternity cover)
- Full time hours are 35 hours per week, but we are passionate about flexible working, talk to us about your preferences.
- Linked to our Ewell (Surrey) office
- In-person working: Meeting in person and working collaboratively are things we value. We work in person around 2 days or more per month
What you'll do:
- Lead the delivery of Samaritans’ legacy and in-memory giving strategy
- Deliver excellent supporter experience, maximising the attraction and retention of our supporters
- Grow and sustain Samaritans’ legacy income in line with our fundraising strategy
- Encourage, explore and develop our supporter care approach to help improve our supporter experience and retention
- Build and manage strategic relationships with external agencies and suppliers
- Produce comprehensive campaign evaluations and make recommendations for continuous improvement
- Lead and develop a high-performing team through a culture of ambition and proactive performance management
What you’ll bring:
- A supporter led mindset and approach
- Demonstrable experience of delivering income growth from legacies and in-memory income streams
- Experience of understanding, using and reporting on data for marketing purposes
- Experience of using a range of marketing channels and approaches, including a strong understanding of different audience needs to maximise income generation
- Excellent people management skills with experience of leading a high performing team
- Strong understanding of budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting
- Skilled in strategic thinking and planning, with a creative approach to solving complex problems
- Confidence in negotiating and influencing at senior levels of the organisation
- Strong understanding of fundraising legislation
For full Job Description and Person Specification click here
Why Samaritans?
At Samaritans, you’ll be part of a people-first organisation deeply committed to inclusion, compassion and learning. You’ll contribute to a team where your voice matters, your expertise makes a difference, and your work helps save lives.
We welcome applications from individuals with lived experience and encourage those from underrepresented communities to apply. We are committed to creating an environment where all our people feel seen, heard and supported.
You’ll join a values-led organisation with a powerful mission and a collaborative culture. We offer flexible hybrid working, excellent benefits, and the chance to make a tangible difference in suicide prevention across the UK and Ireland.
For further information about Samaritans, including our charity structure, values, employee benefits, and application process, please read our recruitment brochure available here. You can also visit our careers website to access this.
We recognise the enormous benefits and the social justice imperatives of ensuring diversity at every level of our organisation. Samaritans is wholly committed to inclusion and diversity and to building a culture and environment where everyone is appreciated for the unique person they are. To ensure Samaritans is representative of those we support and who support us, we particularly welcome applications from disabled, racialised minority and LGBTQ+ candidates, as these people are under-represented at Samaritans.
Criminal record check (DBS):
We take safeguarding seriously at Samaritans and follow safe recruitment practices. As this role has direct contact with children and adults at risk, this role will require an Enhanced DBS check.
At offer stage, as part of the conditional job offer, we will require the candidate to disclose in full, spent and unspent convictions by completing a declaration form. The declaration form will only be seen by those who need to see it as part of the recruitment process.
Apply now
If this sounds like the opportunity for you, please apply. You will be asked to answer some short application questions and to upload your CV.
- Please tell us about your experience leading and growing a fundraising programme, ideally in legacy and/or in-memory income streams. We’re interested in examples of strategies you developed, how you applied insight to shape your approach and how you measured the outcomes you achieved.
- How do you ensure supporters receive a high quality, compassionate and consistent experience across their journey?
- Please describe a situation where you influenced senior stakeholders or collaborated across departments to deliver a fundraising or supporter engagement outcome.
- Please provide an example of how you have built, led and motivated a high performing team.
Applications close: 09:00am on Monday 30th March
1st stage Interviews: w/c 6th April 2026 (online)
Second stage interviews will be held in person, at our office in Ewell (Surrey) w/c 13th April
At Samaritans, human connection is at the heart of everything we do.
We do not use AI at any stage during the selection process. Your application will always be carefully reviewed by the recruiting manager or a member of the Talent Attraction Team.
We kindly ask that you avoid using AI tools to generate your application or interview answers. We want to hear your own ideas, insights, and writing style so your unique strengths can shine through.
Registered Charity
101 - 500
We prevent suicide through the power of human connection. Connecting people in crisis with trained volunteers who will always listen.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Thank you!
Citizens UK
Citizens UK is the UK’s biggest, most diverse and most effective people-powered alliance. We bring communities and local organisations together to work on issues that matter; from campaigning for zebra crossings on dangerous roads, to reforming the immigration system, to the Living Wage campaign. We have a track record of winning change through hundreds of local and national campaigns. We know everyday people have the ability to shape the world around them. We believe that through developing local leaders, we can drive nationwide change and create community-led solutions to big and small problems.
Project Information
Butetown and Grangetown Neighbourhood Fund project, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund. More details here: Neighbourhood Fund | Youth Endowment Fund
Citizens Cymru Wales has developed an innovative approach to reducing youth violence with community organising at its heart, working across four unique assumptions:
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‘It takes a village to raise a child’
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‘Anger without power leads to rage’
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‘Recognising the need to address Adverse Community Experiences’
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‘If you are not at the table, you’re on the menu’
In 2021 it developed a community led action plan to address youth violence in the neighbourhoods of Butetown and Grangetown. This work then secured £1m funding from the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) to demonstrate how community organising can improve the lives of children and young people. Across Grangetown and Butetown, almost 2500 people were listened to, and issues workshops took place from which seven interventions were identified including Mental health, Additional Learning Needs and Literacy, an Employment partnership, Sports and diversionary activities and local microgrants. Each intervention is led by a local community-based organisation. At the heart of the work is building a hyperlocal community organising alliance. Underpinning the work is the development of a Youth Action Zone, a youth-led multi-agency partnership to support young people in the neighbourhood for the long term. The project is in its final year of delivery and needs a locally based project manager to support the current organisations to fulfil the action plan and build a long-term legacy.
Main Responsibilities
This is a unique role, focused on project management but embedding community organising. As project organiser for Butetown and Grangetown Neighbourhood Fund you will support the project aims, enabling core partners and intervention leads to fulfil the action plan and build a legacy for the long term. Alongside this, you will develop a craft of community organising, working closely with civic organisations based in the neighbourhoods, understanding local power and building partnerships with wider stakeholders, and developing local institutions and youth leaders. All of this should ladder up to building the power of the broader Cardiff Citizens alliance.
You will embed the ethos of community organising across the project and its legacy by:
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developing the leadership of people within local organisations - our 'leaders' who lead the campaigns we work on
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helping them to collectively identify the changes they want to see and create strategies to win those changes
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strengthen institutions’ own abilities to achieve their missions.
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Support leaders in connecting the hyperlocal work to the Cardiff Citizens alliance – developing their capacity to work with other leaders and civic institutions across the city to develop collective ambitions and actions (leading up to the 2027 Local Authority elections).
We envisage the role to be roughly 2 days project management and 1 day Community Organising, but given the nature of the project, these will naturally bleed into one another.
Working as the Project Organiser for Citizens UK, your main responsibilities will include:
Career Pathways Headings
Build and manage projects and achieve work targets effectively
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Project manage the YEF/Citizens UK Neighbourhood Fund project in the neighbourhoods of Butetown and Grangetown
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Support the delivery of four interventions (Mental health, ALN & Literacy/Sports and Police action team) including due diligence, accountability, measurement and impact monitoring.
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Ensure good governance; setting up stakeholder meetings and working with community leaders to develop the agenda and actions
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Develop an understanding of place-based systems change and support system behaviours across the project, including feedback, collaborative leadership and shared power
Develop and manage external relationships
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Maintain and extend local relationships and partnerships with community and civic organisations and wider statutory power
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Map and develop an ecosystem of strategic relationships at the local level
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Ensure the YEF work is embedded within the local ecosystem of support for young people.
Communications
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Support the interventions with communicating the impact of their work individually and collectively
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Create comms outputs that communicate the work of the YEF project for internal and external stakeholders
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Represent the organisation effectively to external audiences in meetings and at events
Generate income and resources
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Support the interventions to seek additional funding to continue their work beyond 2027
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Support local organisations to increase their capacity
Identify and develop relational leaders prepared to act with others for the common good and support them through a cycle of action and training in our curriculum
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Conduct 5 relational one-to-ones per week
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Identify and discern actual and potential leaders with the passion and ability to drive change
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Achieve significant development of primary and secondary leaders; nominate new leaders for training on the Citizens UK core taster curriculum and for National Training
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Attend Citizens UK 6-day training to further understanding the method of Community Organising used by CUK
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Teach sessions of the core taster Community Organising curriculum at a local level (supported by a senior Organiser)
Strengthen institutions and develop a broad-based neighbourhood alliance
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Ensure good understanding of the basic interests and traditions of typical member institutions
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Support the development of the Cardiff Citizens alliance
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Support with running institutional development campaigns in a range of organisations in the local area
Personal Specification
(D) Desirable, (E) Essential
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in any subject (D)
Qualification in a subject of relevance to community work or community organising (D)
Experience
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Evidence of having acted in a leadership role with peers or in local community activities (e.g., organising clubs or societies) (E)
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Experience of project management; evidence of having set up and/or delivered projects on time and to standard (E)
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Able to demonstrate previous experience of ‘learning by doing’ in a work or project environment; evidence of being open to feedback and comfortably coachable (E)
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Experience of building consensus between diverse stakeholders to drive progressive change (D)
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Previous campaign experience (D)
Key skills and knowledge
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Excellent interpersonal awareness – ability to listen well and appreciate a viewpoint or opinion that is different from one’s own (E)
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Excellent concern for impact – ability to adapt own behaviour to address the needs or concerns of someone else (E)
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Good communication skills – able to speak with conviction and passion; and to make a logical argument (E)
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Excellent time management skills with the ability to juggle a wide range of competing demands (E)
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Strong IT skills to include MS Office (E)
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Understanding of policy and campaign landscape in the UK, particularly around young people, community empowerment and neighbourhoods (D)
Personal qualities & values
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A self-starter with ability to take initiative and work independently (E)
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A passion for justice (E)
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A positive enthusiasm for working with faith congregations, trade unions, schools, and other community organisations (E)
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An interest in and experience of politics and public life (E)
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Able to work in a team (E)
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Willingness to work within accountable relationships (E)
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Self-motivated and adaptable (E)
Our Organisers and some project teams work closely with our member institutions and will be expected to attend member events that take place in the evenings and occasional weekends. We operate a Time Off in Lieu approach and have very flexible working arrangements to ensure a good work-life balance.
The successful applicant will be required to undertake a satisfactory Enhanced DBS check. DBS checks are renewed on a 3-year cycle.
About the application process
We work within diverse communities bringing people together. In line with our Inclusion value, we would love to see applications from LGBTQIA+ people, people from racialised communities, people living with disabilities and people of faith, all to better represent the communities we work in. We want our employees to have the working conditions that allows them to fully participate, be able to be their best authentic selves and thrive doing so, and we have employee networks to support staff. Even if you don’t quite meet all the required criteria still consider applying, as we invest in our employees and support them to develop the skills and knowledge required to deliver their role.
For questions and reasonable adjustments regarding your application including information in a different format, or our recruitment process, please email us.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.