Lead Funding Manager – Creative, Confident Communities (Maternity Cover)

Our client is one of the UK’s leading independent funders, committed to improving our natural world, securing a fairer future and strengthening the bonds within communities. Each year, the Foundation distributes around £50 million in grants and makes social and impact investments that help organisations create lasting social and environmental change.

Its strategy focuses on three interdependent aims: Our Natural World, A Fairer Future and Creative, Confident Communities. Alongside funding, our client uses its influence, convenes and brokers alliances, and commissions research to drive systemic change and maximise impact.

Prospectus is delighted to be partnering with the Foundation to recruit a Lead Funding Manager for its Creative, Confident Communities team. This is a maternity cover role and a rare opportunity to play a leading role in shaping community-led economic development and regeneration across the UK.

Creative, Confident Communities seeks to strengthen the social, cultural and economic fabric of places by supporting local people to lead change themselves. The programme has three priorities: ensuring communities have the power to influence decisions that affect them, helping local economies work better for local people, and enabling culture and creativity to build thriving communities.

The role
Reporting to the Director of Creative, Confident Communities, you will provide strategic leadership for our client’s Community-driven Enterprise and Regeneration priority. You will lead the development and delivery of funding strategies, manage a portfolio of significant grants, assess high-value and strategically important proposals, and build influential relationships across the sector.

This is a role for someone who wants to do more than fund good work. You will identify opportunities for change, convene partners, commission learning and research, and help shape the Foundation’s response to emerging opportunities and challenges in community-led economic development and regeneration.

As a visible ambassador for our client, you will represent the Foundation across networks, partnerships and sector forums, helping to advance its mission and influence. You will work closely with community organisations, social enterprises, local authorities, anchor institutions, funders and other partners to support more inclusive local economies and ensure communities play a meaningful role in shaping the long-term development of their places.

The role will focus on resourcing locally rooted enterprise, supporting community ownership and leadership, and strengthening the capacity of communities to influence economic and regeneration decisions. You will help catalyse partnerships and investment that enable communities to build resilient local economies and create lasting benefits for the people who live there.

The culture at the organisation is collaborative, ambitious and deeply values-driven. You will join a supportive team that encourages curiosity, learning and shared leadership.

The person
We are seeking an experienced and strategic professional with a strong understanding of community-driven enterprise, local economic development and place-based regeneration. You may have gained this expertise within a funder, charitable trust, community organisation, social enterprise, local authority or the wider regeneration/economic development sector.

Experience of leading impactful work that strengthens local economies, supports community ownership and asset development, or advances community-led regeneration will be important.

You will bring excellent judgement, experience of strategy development, strong analytical skills and the ability to assess complex organisational and financial information with confidence. An accomplished relationship builder, you will be comfortable convening diverse stakeholders, influencing at a senior level and turning insight into action.

Most importantly, you will be motivated by the Foundation’s mission and share its commitment to social justice, equity and community-led change. This is an exceptional opportunity to make a tangible contribution to one of the UK’s most influential foundations and help shape stronger, more inclusive and economically resilient communities across the UK.