About the Youth Endowment Fund
We’re here to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice.
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a £200m endowment and a mission that matters. We exist to prevent children becoming involved in violence. We do this by funding great initiatives, leading cutting-edge research and working for change - scaling up and spreading the practices that make a difference.
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) has a critical role in ensuring we succeed in this work. You have a key leadership role in overseeing the overall health of the Fund in partnership with the Executive Director. The role oversees our finances, people management and – for the right candidate –much of our grant-making and project management.
Key responsibilities
You’ll lead on key organisational governance processes and ensure the Fund makes wise decisions, by:
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Being a leading member of our Directors’ team, overseeing all elements of the Fund’s work.
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Ensuring that the Fund operates as efficiently and effectively as possible by prioritising the right activities and matching resources to deliver on our mission.
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Ensuring we have the right long, medium and short-term financial plans in place and that we maintain close control over our financial decisions and spend.
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Informing our Board and our Risk and Audit Committee on our financial performance and risk.
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Ensuring the Fund’s investments are well managed through supporting the Endowment Investment Committee (this does not require investment experience).
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Managing our Grants and Evaluation Committee (this decides which evaluations we should fund) and ensuring it operates effectively.
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Ensuring that any ambiguities in the organisation are identified and removed.
You make sure that the Fund has the people, tools and resources in place to excel. This will require us to:
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Hire, develop and inspire the very best people: Managing our Head of People, you will ensure that we hire the best possible staff, compensate them appropriately, provide necessary and effective training, maintain a strong focus on staff well-being, manage and develop staff effectively and address poor performance when required.
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Provide staff with the tools they need to perform: Managing our Head of Grant Operations, you will ensure that we have the tools we need to deliver, including management information, databases, systems and processes and office facilities.
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Track performance: Track performance against our goals efficiently and effectively, championing a system of accountability and action to review, identify and empower the right people to act on delivering according to the plan.
Working with colleagues, you’ll ensure we award grants, manage grantees and oversee evaluations efficiently and effectively. This will require us to:
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Make excellent decisions about our grants: Working with – and potentially managing1 - the Assistant Director for Programmes, Impact and Partnerships, you will help to ensure that our processes for assessing funding applications achieve our organisational priorities for evidence generation. This requires you to understand what partners are trying to do, whether it’s likely to work, whether it will help us build an accessible and trusted body of knowledge, and whether we can build on it to make long-term change happen.
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Evaluate our programmes: Working with - and potentially managing - the Assistant Director of Evaluation, you will help to ensure that we select and partner with high-quality evaluators to understand how well different activities work.
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Ensuring the team maintains effective monitoring processes: Working with your team, you will develop the necessary skills, processes and decision-making processes to identify when things aren’t going to plan and respond accordingly.
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Build strong relationships with your external partners: You and your team will build strong, trusting relationships with the projects the YEF funds and the evaluators that we work with. Your team will be known for being attentive yet assertive and measured and efficient in the reporting information we expect. You will become well connected in the sectors that we are working in.
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Identify opportunities to scale up projects: You will be proactive in identifying projects that would benefit from capacity development support or that may be ready to scale up their work, collaborating with Impetus to deliver on this.
In support of these goals you will also
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Lead and build a team that is so much more than the sum of its parts: Working with your direct reports you will build a culture that brings the very best of the different skill sets and approaches in your team. You will lead this team, providing exceptional direction, culture and clarity.
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Make it easy to be effective when working in your team: You will bring clarity, lean processes, clear accountabilities, timely decision-making and effective systems so that people working in your team comment on how easy it is to get things done.
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See your primary team as the Directors team: As a core member of the Directors team, you will be part of making the most important decisions about the short-term and long-term strategy of the Fund. You will build and model the culture and values that we need to make a real difference. You will leave ego at home and look to make the rest of this team a great success.
Person specification
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You are excellent at leading on finance in an organisation: You find it easy and straightforward to develop and oversee, large organisational budgets and ensure timely preparation of management accounts. You’re excellent at financial forecasting and understand how to make judgements and recommendations based on future scenario planning. You have experience reporting to Boards on financial performance and health, and leading on organisational external audits.
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You are strategic about finance: You’ve got real skill in distilling complex financial information into simple, easy to understand reports and presentations that enable good decision-making. You see your knowledge of finance as a way to serve Director-level colleagues with overall decision-making. You also understand how to navigate competing priorities and how to calculate and articulate risk and reward, knowing few decisions are straightforward.
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You get teams to use data well: You understand that accurate data and excellent management information tools enable good decision-making. You understand how management information databases (like Salesforce) work and would be able to maintain and build a culture of recording data and maintaining data quality within big teams. Ideally, you have experience working directly with Salesforce.
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You get things done and are brilliant at improving things: In previous jobs, you have held significant responsibility for ensuring challenging projects are delivered on time. You like finding ways to make things operate better for everyone. You are excellent at designing and putting in place effective systems and processes.
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You are a low ego and effective leader: You have a track record of building and leading effective teams. You are thoughtful about how to get a team working well and people tend to warm to you and respect you. You are not afraid of managing someone brighter and better than you or of addressing poor performance. You leave ego at home. You work very well in a team. You like taking responsibility for things. You can balance the task, the individual and the team.
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You are interested and experienced in both staff development and financial planning: You are equally at home thinking about the processes and approach we need to recruit and develop great staff as you are thinking about how we control our expenditure and report our finances.
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You learn fast but remain humble: You are quick at getting your head around things. It wouldn't faze you to have responsibility for organising things that are new to you as long as you have an expert to ask advice from. You like learning and developing. You know how much you don't know as well as what you do.
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You are interested and thoughtful about grant-making and evaluation: You may not be an expert in grant-making, but you have experience of how charities think and approach applications for money. You have enough cynicism to know how these things can go wrong, but not so much that you can’t make them go right. You may not be an expert in evaluation, but you care about finding out what works.
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You are an excellent strategic thinker: People say that you are good at seeing the big picture as well as the detail. You have experience of wrestling into place a strategy for a project or organisation. You would be able to describe the strategy of the work you are leading at the moment. You are able to see things from different points of view.
While it’s not a criteria, we’re especially interested to hear from applicants who have lived experience of youth violence.
It’s also important to us that the people we hire do not discriminate. We believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background.
All appointments will be made on merit, following a fair and transparent process. In line with the Equality Act 2010, however, the organisation may employ positive action where candidates from underrepresented groups can demonstrate their ability to perform the role equally well.
Additional benefits include
£1,000 professional development budget annually, 28 days plus Bank Holidays, four half days for volunteering activities.
If you’re interested
To apply, please send a CV and cover letter, and complete the monitoring form click on "Apply for this job" button by 5pm, Friday 31st May 2024.
We will plan to host the first round of interviews the week commencing the 3rd June 2024.
You’ll be required to provide proof of your eligibility to work in the UK. As part of our commitment to flexible working we will consider a range of options for the successful applicant. All options can be discussed at the interview stage.
Your data
Your personal data will be shared for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes our HR team, interviewers (who may include other partners in the project and independent advisors), relevant team managers and our IT service provider if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles. We do not share your data with other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you. We do not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.
The people we are looking for do not discriminate and we believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Job Title: Senior Supervising Social Worker
Salary: £35,893 per annum (increasing to £39,880 in 18 months) + £1,500 per annum Out of Hours Rota Allowance + £750 per annum Homeworking Allowance
Hours & Contract: 21 Hours per week - Permanent Role
Location: Homebased in the South West area including Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon, Gloucester, Somerset, Wiltshire
A rare opportunity to work for an ‘OUTSTANDING’ team where trauma-informed practice is the foundation of everything we do. Brilliant training opportunities, clinical supervision, and support. “Members of the team who spoke to the inspector said that they felt valued in their role. They considered that they had access to opportunities that they had not experienced in previous employment. The agency provides exceptional resources for staff to ensure that their emotional well-being and a healthy work-life balance are promoted.” (OFSTED 2022)
As a ‘not for profit’ organisation, TACT puts the needs of our children and carers first and look to appoint individuals who are as passionate about fostering as we are. We are a homeworking organisation, and we pride ourselves on our flexible working opportunities, available from day one, an extensive wellbeing programme and our benefits package, all curated to nurture a healthy work life balance for all our employees so they can give an excellent service to our carers and the young people and children we care for.
As a foster care charity, TACT invests all surplus income into services, staff, carers, and child development. This means that we have been able to invest unique projects like TACT Connect, our unique and ground-breaking scheme for TACT care experienced young people and adults, as well as our expanding TACT Education Service and our new Health Service. All our activities are built on our commitment to becoming a fully trauma informed organisation, in line with our key values and ethos.
TACT achieved 16th place in the UK Best Companies Work For survey results in 2023, with 91% of employees acknowledging that the organisation is run on strong values and principles and 94% stating they feel proud to work for this organisation.
If you want to be valued as a professional, be appreciated at work and contribute to better outcomes for the children and young people connected with TACT, apply now.
Whilst being homebased, the Senior Supervising Social Worker will visit and support foster families across the TACT South West area including Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon, Gloucester, Somerset and Wiltshire areas but will also travel within the wider region for team meetings, training and other in person events.
Overall Duties of the Senior Supervising Social Worker will include:
- An appropriate social work qualification
- Up-to-date registration with Social Work England
- Experience in fostering/family placements or other childcare settings
- Up-to-date knowledge of relevant legislation including the Fostering National Minimum Standards and Fostering regulations.
- Experience of working with/supporting looked after children and their foster carers.
- Knowledge of matching criteria and stability of placments.
- Capable of using electronic records systems and IT effectively, including participating in virtual meetings and webinars.
TACT offer an excellent employee benefits package including:
- 31 days paid holiday plus bank holidays.
- Flexible working arrangements (including compressed hours, flexibility around core hours, volunteer days policy).
- Family friendly policies.
- Homeworking ‘bundle’ including annual allowance, IT equipment and a loan for home office set up.
- Perkbox – retail discount scheme.
- Stakeholder pension scheme (salary sacrifice).
- Fantastic learning and development opportunities.
- Employee Assistance Programme (including CBT counselling, remote GP appointments, physiotherapy, mental health support and second opinions).
An Enhanced DBS clearance is required for this role and will be processed by TACT on your behalf.
Closing Date: Sunday 2nd June 2024
- Interview Date: Tuesday 11th June 2024
Safeguarding is everyone’s business and TACT believes that only the people with the right skills and values should work in social work. As part of TACT’s commitment to safeguarding, we properly examine the skills, experience, qualifications, and values of potential staff in relation to our work with vulnerable young children. We use rigorous and consistent recruitment approaches to help safeguard TACT’s young people. All our staff are expected to work in line with TACT’s safeguarding policies.
We reserve the right to close a vacancy earlier than advertised if the volume of applications is excessive, you are therefore advised to apply at your earliest convenience.
TACT does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies, nor the fees associated with them.