Supporter Care Manager

The Supporter Care Manager manages and leads the Supporter Services function to provide an exceptional service to our supporters, from initial contact through the whole of their supporter journey, including thanking, welcome and upgrade calls to exemplary complaint handling. The Supporter Care Manager ensures the day-to-day operations of the Supporter Care team are completed within agreed timeframes and to the highest of standards. This role continually reviews and challenges the function’s processes to identify improvements and efficiencies in order to continually improve our supporter offer and ultimately increase fundraising income and donor retention. 

Key Responsibilities

Communication and networking 

• Deliver an exceptional service to our supporters from initial contact through to thanking, responding to enquiries in a timely and effective way. 
• Develop and maintain excellent internal relationships to represent the Fundraising department effectively and credibly in person, and in all correspondence with supporters. 
• Manage the relationship with our external suppliers who manage the fulfilment of appeal-led gifts and Direct Debits. 
• Ensure our suppliers are meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and be prepared to hold them to account for any discrepancies or failings to meet SLAs. 
• Build good professional relationships with key stakeholders across the Foundation. 
• Communicate technical and financial information clearly to colleagues and external stakeholders and investigate non-routine queries.
• Work with Fundraising teams to ensure all fundraising activity is briefed into Supporter Care to enable delivery. 
• Maintain sector knowledge, keeping up to date with developments in best practice. 

Team management  

• Line management responsibility of the Supporter Care Coordinator. 
• Maintain a high-performing operational function, managing the Supporter Care functions workload to answer all supporter enquiries through post, email and phone within agreed SLAs and to the highest possible standard. 
• Ensure the Supporter Care Coordinator is fully trained, provided with the information they require and offered development opportunities in the way of training and networking where possible and relevant. 
• Continually review and evaluate the remit of the function to identify any efficiencies that could be made. 
• Develop a culture to enable and empower the Supporter Services function to proactively identify opportunities to increase supporter value and improve our ways of working. 
• Support the Supporter Care Coordinator in the development of new guidelines, processes and procedures.  

Decision making, planning and problem solving 

• Act as an ‘early warning system’ to spot potential trends and enable the organisation to mitigate these risks and/or respond quickly to opportunities where required. 
• Use good judgement to prioritise requests based on criticality of tasks and relative importance of the supporter’s request, and escalate where required. 
• Use experience, initiative and judgement to solve predictable problems using initiative and creative vision to come up with solutions. 
• Run regular diagnostic reports from the database to ensure information is being accurately recorded and any errors picked up at the earliest opportunity. 
• Be prepared to change working practices in time for new fundraising regulations and communicate this to the team. 

Service delivery 

• Set team KPIs and manage team performance against them. This will include monitoring the performance of our external suppliers. 
• Maintain the CRM, creating and updating donor records to provide an accurate record of communications and contact. 
• Ensure all thanking is completed within agreed SLAs, providing personalised responses as required and develop response templates for the Gift Processing team for automated thanking. 
• Working with the Head of Individual & Legacy Giving to develop and lead a comprehensive programme of internally delivered welcome calls, telephone upgrades and conversion calls to our supporters. 
• Manage complex and non-routine requests from supporters and colleagues. 
• Regularly review and explore new systems and ways of working, seeking to continuously improve delivery. 

Analysis and research 

• Report back on complaints and incidents to both internal and external stakeholders, with details of the resolutions and plans to mitigate against this in the future.
• Role responsibilities are not exhaustive, and you would be reasonably expected to take on wider tasks that are commensurate with the level of your role.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Skills, abilities, and attributes:

• Excellent project management skills. 
• Able to set objectives, measure performance and achieve ambitious KPIs. 
• Excellent interpersonal skills, able to build rapport and establish credibility quickly, tailoring style to a broad range of individuals at all levels. 
• Ability to gather, analyse and report on key metrics. 
• Excellent communication skills both written and verbal. 
• Able to be diplomatic and sensitive on the telephone (including dealing with angry or emotional callers at times). 
• Ability to work systematically and accurately under pressure. 
• Conveys enthusiasm and positive attitude, and able to inspire others. 
• Passionate about the fundraising causes supported by Fundraising. 
• Able to work on own initiative, make decisions independently, and think creatively and laterally. 
• Excellent team player willing to be flexible to support colleagues in a busy environment. 

Knowledge, experience, and qualifications: 

• Previous customer service experience. 
• Experience of Raiser’s Edge, or a relationship database. 
• Experience of managing and motivating the Supporter Care function. 
• Knowledge of fundraising operations.

Benefits

• Contributory Pension
• Annual personal development budget
• Annual health and wellbeing personal allowance
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, and parental leave pay accessible without length of service requirements.
• Health and wellbeing programme that offers optional free yearly health check-ups.
• Support for healthy eating via fruit bowls and onsite lunch facilities. 
• Agile working, flexible hours, and supportive IT kit. 
• Shower facilities and bike lock area. 
• Generous annual leave (27 days + bank holidays)
• Subsidies for glasses
• Employee Assistance Programme