Fundraising and Communications Officer

Who are we?

Orchards is a Christian charity with a vision to see women free from sexual exploitation and empowered for flourishing, independent lives. We build trusting relationships with each woman and enable her to access support for lasting recovery through our main areas:

• transitional safe housing
• specialist trauma counselling
• tailored life and work skills mentoring
• the offer of local church life for community, care, and exploring faith for herself if she chooses.

We are in an exciting time of growth as we continue to operate across three sites: South London, East London and East Sussex and prepare to open our fourth safe property. We have an opportunity for someone to join our team and manage our Communications and ‘Supporter-Care’ aspects of fundraising as we prepare to reach more women over the coming years.

We have a Genuine Occupational Requirement that our staff members hold a Christian faith (see below for further details). You should be comfortable bringing faith conversations and prayer into your work as appropriate, as well as participating in times of prayer with the wider Orchards team. We request that all staff commit to and uphold our ethos.

Orchards is run by women for women and is therefore restricted to female applicants under the Equality Act 2010, Schedule 9, Part 1.

Growing our income generation

We are currently recruiting for two roles in our fundraising team. Our other role is a Grants and Trusts Manager and is focused on grants and trusts fundraising. Both of these roles are part time. We have written them separately as we believe that typically these are two different skill sets within the fundraising space.

However, if you believe that you have strength in both areas, we'd love to hear from you. We are very open to discussing combining the roles into one full time role. A combined role would involve hybrid working including travel to our London and Brighton sites and candidates would need to be comfortable in having a broad generalist role. Both skill sets would be tested at interview. If you would like to be considered for the combined role, please specify this in your cover letter.

More homeworking options are available for the Grants and Trusts role than for the Communications and Fundraising role.

Purpose of the role

Orchards are looking for a creative thinker who can help us tell our story and get others passionate about the work we do through relationship management. If you are an exceptional communicator, with an ability to build and nurture relationships with supporters and fundraising volunteers, are enthusiastic about church-led social action, passionate about tackling sexual exploitation, and have a willingness to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in, we would love to hear from you.

The ideal candidate would be a fundraising and communications all-rounder, with an understanding of how strong communications can support effective fundraising.

Our work is growing quickly, so it's an exciting time to join our small but brilliant team. You will be working with our Co-Directors very closely, sharing ideas, reviewing strategy and developing and delivering new ideas and initiatives.

The purpose of this new role is to:

• Increase our regular giving supporter base
• Grow our community fundraising by developing and coordinating a team of voluntary ‘Fundraising Ambassadors’
• Build effective partnerships through our external communications with churches and church networks, across the three hubs in London and East Sussex