Senior Grant Making Manager

Senior Grant Making Manager – 12 months fixed term contract

The Senior Grant Making Manager plays a pivotal role in the success of funding in our England Directorate and in particular our responsive funding in the London, South East and East Region.

Reporting to the Senior Head of Responsive Funding in the London, South East & East Region, you will play a key role in delivering our strategy, ‘It Starts with Community’, maximizing the impact of our funding across the region with a particular focus on London where you will work with others to develop our regional and London specific strategic direction, ensuring excellent management and oversight of day-to-day grant making and learning.

You will own key stakeholder relationships within London and play a lead role in developing the regions’ stakeholder engagement and relationship strategy. You will be a key representative of the National Lottery Community Fund in the region as part of the Regional Leadership Team, deputising for the Head of Region as necessary.

You will also be a key member of the England Leadership Team, maintaining strong relationships with colleagues across the England Directorate including other regional teams, key business partners as well as colleagues across The Fund.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Leading on funding strategy and delivery for London. Working to support the delivery of our Reaching Communities programme and the diversification of our funding portfolio to include partnerships work, more intentional grant making and our commitment to being more than a funder.
• Stakeholder Engagement across London and the region – To maximise our impact, to ensure a joined up collaborative approach and for learning and awareness raising, we need to work with others. You will hold, develop and maintain a strong network of external relationships.
• Leading, supporting and inspiring a team of 3 x Funding Managers (who you line manage) –providing support and overseeing the work of their teams (approx 20 staff), with a focus on delivery, values and maintaining wellbeing. You will also provide leadership to the full regional team.
• Leading through change and supporting the delivery of our new operating model and ways of working. This includes ensuring teams understand and adapt to change, that operating structures align and our processes and procedures are consistent across all of England responsive teams.
• Engagement locally and at an England and UK level. – You will liaise with and hold key relationships with other regional hubs and England funding teams as well as functions in Business Support, Knowledge and Learning and Communications, to ensure a joined up one Fund approach. You will also need to maintain solid relationships across a number of key Corporate functions including Finance, Legal, Audit, Service Design/GMS amongst others.

Skills & Requirements

You are a values based leader who is passionate about making a difference through our funding and our commitment to community voice and empowerment as well as our equity based approach as a funder.

You will have a deep understanding of the communities, funding landscape and sector we serve in London and across the region. You will know the funding business inside out and have built networks you can pull on both inside and outside the organisation. You will be able to define and deliver on our funding strategy for London and the wider region.

Your ability to build and maintain excellent relationships with a diverse range of senior level internal and external stakeholders will be second to none. You will have experience in creating connections and facilitating diverse stakeholder networks and you will be a confident communicator, comfortable in all environments.

You will have experience of building and leading teams and driving a culture of inclusion with an ability to coach, inspire, and empower people. You’ll need to be a resilient self-starter who can plan with others and use excellent engagement skills to bring others into the work you are responsible for.

You’ll be a problem solver and solutions orientated with significant skills in diplomacy and a great supporter and encourager. You’ll be able to juggle competing priorities but organised enough to get all of that into a clear plan and delivery model that is strategic and operationally sensible.

You’ll be comfortable in risk and determined to succeed by adding value. You’ll have attention to detail but skilled enough to ensure that ideas, concepts and structures are easily explained in simple and clear ways.

You will demonstrate an ability to work in an agile way, ensuring we are flexible and continue to improve in line with feedback and insights from customers and frontline staff.

Interview details:

• Date: 1st and 2nd December
• Format: Online
• Location: Mobile - London focused but with responsibility across the London & South East & East region

For an informal discussion about the role, please contact the recruitment team.

How to apply:

Upload your CV in word format and write a supporting statement (1000 words) with the following criteria, we will use this to score your application.

Essential Criteria:

• Strong knowledge of the VCSE sector, funding landscape and communities of London.
• You are an inclusive & experienced leader, with an adaptive positive leadership style and highly developed team and people management skills who champions employee engagement.
• An experienced senior level grant maker, strong in defining and delivering funding strategy to maximize impact.
• Portfolio and operational management experience; as well as financial and risk management in a funding context.
• Demonstrated effectiveness as a communicator and relationship builder who feels comfortable in all environments – from one-to-one communication to public speaking and high-level engagement.

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience of leading through change to align operating structures to strategy, centralising customer experience, quality service and effective use of resources.
• Good decision-making skills and attention to detail, considering evidence, analysis and personal experience to make funding decisions and to take and mitigate risk as appropriate.
• Experience of managing large, complex budgets and data analysis.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion 

Communities in the UK come in all shapes and sizes. National Lottery funding is for everyone – therefore, we are committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and we work hard to ensure our funding reaches where it is needed.  

We also believe our people should represent the communities, organisations and individuals we work with. That’s why The National Lottery Community Fund is committed to being an inclusive employer and a great place to work. We recognise and celebrate the fact that our people come from diverse backgrounds. We positively welcome applications from people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities or longstanding health conditions, people who are LGBTQ+, and people from different socio-economic and educational backgrounds, as well as people of all ages. 

As a Disability Confident Employer, we take a proactive approach in making reasonable adjustments, if needed, throughout the recruitment process and during employment. (This can be related to a physical and mental health condition).