Head of Fundraising and Development

Young Roots is a London-based charity working with young refugees and asylum seekers aged 11-25, most of whom are alone in the UK without their families.

Support provided includes intensive one-to-one Casework, youth and sporting activities, English language mentoring and access to specialist therapeutic and legal advice.

It’s an exciting time to join as Young Roots launches a new strategic plan, which envisages development of their services to meet young people’s more complex needs, significant growth in their policy and campaigns team and a step change in their internal operations to reflect their new stage of maturity.

As part of this, the Head of Fundraising and Development will play a pivotal role by developing a fundraising strategy to support the charity’s growth and diversify their income, growing the reach and impact of their communications and ensuring they are able to evidence their impact in a compelling way to different audiences.

As Head of Fundraising and Development, you will: 

• act as a proactive and collaborative member of the Senior Leadership Team, supporting the CEO to develop the vision and strategy for the organisation, drive its implementation and make decisions about the running of the organisation, role modelling and embedding our values;
• act as an inspiring and supportive leader for the team, motivating, coaching and overseeing their delivery and development, supporting them to achieve their potential;
• develop and deliver a new ambitious fundraising strategy aligned to out 2024-27 organisational strategy to grow and diversify our funding, setting, monitoring and delivering targets and managing risks as appropriate;
• work with the senior leadership team to set annual budgets and fundraising targets and monitor income and expenditure to ensure funding targets are being met;
• work collaboratively with policy, campaigns and communications colleagues to develop and deliver a new communications strategy to build our profile, deliver income, grow and engage supporters and advance campaigning objectives, setting, monitoring and delivering targets and managing risks as appropriate.

​​Ideal skills and experience: 

• Previous success of developing a fundraising strategy in the charity sector to achieve growth targets across multiple income streams and particularly trusts and foundations, individual giving and corporates.
• Significant experience in a senior fundraising role, with a strong background in trusts and foundations and digital fundraising strategies and campaigns and experience of successfully managing a large number of restricted grants.
• Strategic thinker with an understanding of the interface between communication and influencing and communication and fundraising and a data-driven approach to shaping how we engage different audiences to create mutual value across fundraising and influencing objectives.
• Experience of successfully building and maintaining strong relationships with a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders at a senior level, particularly with trusts and foundations and corporates.
• Experience of staff management and development and successfully supporting them to achieve their potential.

See the job pack for more details.

Employee benefits

Young Roots has a range of generous employment policies intended to support staff wellbeing and promote diversity, equity and inclusion, including a sabbatical policy allowing employees to take extended periods of leave after completing a minimum period in post and generous sick leave and special leave policies.