Head of research and programme policy jobs

Help us achieve our vision that fewer people die by suicide.​

Are you results driven, commercially aware and passionate about building meaningful relationships and making a real impact? Samaritans is looking for a dynamic Corporate Partnerships Executive to help us secure new corporate partners and nurture and develop our existing corporate supporters. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who is interested in building a career in corporate fundraising to join a talented and ambitious team.​

In this role, you’ll drive forward new business by seeking and securing innovative new partnerships with high-value companies. You’ll also deliver excellent account management by providing our partners with an inspiring supporter experience.​

You’ll be instrumental in helping our team to reach our ambitious fundraising goals to support Samaritans’ life-saving work.

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Contract terms:

• £30,000-£33,000 per annum, plus benefits

• Permanent

• 35 hours per week (full-time)
• We are passionate about flexible working, talk to us about your preferences
• Hybrid, linked to our Ewell (Surrey) office. You will also have the opportunity to work from our London office.
• We value meeting in person and working collaboratively. We work in person around 2 days or more per month.
• 28 days annual leave, plus bank holidays

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​What you'll be doing:

• ​Manage and steward a portfolio of corporate partners, providing both reactive and proactive support.
• Develop and implement fundraising initiatives, creating resources that drive engagement.
• Achieve personal income targets from existing and new corporate partnerships and new business activity KPIs.
• Research and cultivate new corporate prospects to grow our supporter base.
• Create impactful communications including reports, presentations, and proposals.
• Provide administrative support including income coding, inbox management, and volunteer coordination.
• Represent Samaritans at meetings and events​​

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What you’ll bring:

• ​Previous experience within fundraising, account management, sales, event management or marketing.
• Experience working towards specific objectives and financial targets
• Ability to generate creative and imaginative proposals and take the initiative to develop new relationships with prospective partners.
• Great communication skills, with the ability to build relationships easily and provide expert customer care.
• Strong presentation skills
• Experience gained within a Charity fundraising or third sector role is desirable.​

For full details, please see the Job Description and Person Specification

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Why Samaritans?

At Samaritans, you’ll join a values-led organisation with a powerful mission. You’ll be part of a collaborative and supportive team where your voice matters, your expertise makes a difference, and your work helps save lives.​

We offer flexible hybrid working, great benefits, and the chance to make a tangible difference in suicide prevention across the UK and Ireland. To find out more about Samaritans, please read our recruitment brochure.​

We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive organisation that reflects the people we support and who support us. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and walks of life. We are committed to creating an inclusive culture where everyone feels seen, heard and supported, at all levels of the organisation.

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Apply now

If this sounds like the opportunity for you, we’d love for you to apply. You will be asked to answer some short application questions and to upload your CV. If you require adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know.​

Applications close: ​09:00am on Monday 10th August 2026

Interviews: w/c 17th August

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At Samaritans, human connection is at the heart of everything we do. 

We do not use AI at any stage during the selection process. Your application will always be carefully reviewed by the recruiting manager or a member of the Talent Attraction Team. 

We kindly ask that you avoid using AI tools to generate your application or interview answers. We want to hear your own ideas, insights, and writing style so your unique strengths can shine through. We recognise that some candidates may use assistive technology or tools to help with accessibility, structure or grammar.   

We're looking for someone to support our two co-ceos at an award-winning charity changing how the media tells stories about climate, economy, children's health, and more. This is a varied, high-trust executive assistant role at the heart of a small, values-led team.

About Heard
At Heard, we help the UK's biggest broadcasters, publishers and charities move away from trauma-heavy storytelling and towards stories that make change feel possible. For 18 years we've worked with teams at the BBC, Channel 4, Netflix, The Guardian and The Sun, and with charities including Crisis and Great Ormond Street Hospital. Last year alone, our work reached a combined audience of over 23 million people.

About the role

As executive assistant, you'll provide comprehensive support to our two co-CEOs and, where needed, the wider exec team. This is a varied, trusted role at the centre of the organisation, covering everything from calendar management and inbox triage to board logistics and minute-taking.

You'll act as a gatekeeper and gateway between our co-CEOs and the people they work with, exercising judgement and discretion to keep things running smoothly. You'll also hold our governance processes from scheduling and minuting board meetings to coordinating trustee recruitment and keeping our terms of reference up to date. This role gives you the chance to build expertise across administration, governance, and organisational operations in a progressive organisation.

Key details

• Job type: part time, 12-month fixed-term contract with potential to extend
• Hours: Part-time, 24 hours per week
• Based at: London-based, hybrid (minimum 2 days inthe office including Tuesdays)
• Salary: £37821.60 full-time equivalent (£28,366.20 pro-rata)
• Reports to: co-ceo

Benefits

• 7.5% pension contribution
• Generous annual leave plus bank holidays, day of birthday leave, and days off between Christmas and New Year
• Annual training budget and mentoring
• Hybrid working
• Four-day week trial (full-time equivalent is 32 hours Mon–Thurs)

What you'll be working on

• Providing sophisticated calendar management and inbox oversight for the co-CEOs and exec team
• Prioritising inquiries and requests, troubleshooting conflicts, and making judgement calls to keep day-to-day engagements running smoothly
• Preparing documents, reports and presentations, and composing correspondence
• Coordinating exec team meetings and supporting staff meetings where needed
• Scheduling and minuting board meetings, including drafting agendas and compiling presentation materials
• Supporting trustee recruitment and induction, and keeping standing board documents up to date
• Assisting with the annual report and other governance-related tasks

About you

• you have at least 4 years' PA, secretarial or administrative experience, including drafting business correspondence independently
• you're highly organised, methodical, and can prioritise with accuracy under pressure
• you have experience taking minutes at senior-level meetings, ideally board or exec level
• you're self-confident, discreet and comfortable working with people at all levels
• you have strong written skills and good general IT skills using Google Workspace
• you can work independently and proactively, with sound judgement and an eye for what's coming next

Experience in the charity sector, particularly a small charity, is helpful but not essential.

How to apply
Apply via our website by submitting your CV and answering short application questions.
Closing date: 9am, Tuesday 1st September 2026
Interviews: First round online Monday 14th September; second round in person in London, Tuesday 22nd September

See Job Pack for full details.

About us

Carers UK’s vision is to create a society that recognises, values and supports carers. As the leading national charity for unpaid carers, we exist to make life better for carers, however caring affects them. Our support, advice, information and campaigning work are now needed more than ever, as unpaid carers are providing more and more care, adversely impacting on their own health and wellbeing.

About the role

We recognise the value of social media in communicating with all our audiences; whether unpaid carers or their friends and families, employers, politicians, service providers, supporters and all those people who may become a carer for a partner, family member, friend or neighbour and will need information, support, and to know that there are people working to make their lives better.

This role works with colleagues across the organisation, including our senior management team - but also in partnership with external organisations and agencies - with targets set for engagement (and other indicators of the success of our campaigns). We're working on multiple campaigns simultaneously; whether that's Carers Week, campaigns to influence changes to the law to better support carers, encouraging unpaid carers to join us as members, updating on activities in the devolved nations or getting people to fundraise for Carers UK. And we use a mix of owned, earned and paid communications to drive engagement in a challenging and crowded environment in order to get our messages to cut through. It's a busy, but varied role, in a supportive and collaborative team.

About you

Working within the communications and marketing team, you'll be confident in managing our social media accounts (we have many), ensuring we're using platforms to get our messages out to both wide and targeted audiences with engaging and timely content.

You'll be happy using tools for social listening, interacting with our audiences and building our reach. You'll be familiar with key metrics for social engagement and will be reporting back to colleagues and other stakeholders - and using this data to constantly improve our communications.

You'll be skilled in writing longer form content for our members' magazine, Caring, proof reading articles, posting content on our websites, creating graphics and making sure our content is engaging, audience focused and dynamic. Oh, and you probably know your way around an emoji set and are not scared of a well timed pun. Plus you'll have a great eye for detail and be confident in your ability to prioritise (and sometimes reprioritise) your workload as needed.

We're a small but effective communications team and pride ourselves on getting stuck in and supporting each other when we need to deliver big on fast moving projects, so you'll need be able to juggle lots of demands while recognising the importance of always hitting deadlines.

Diversity and inclusion

Carers UK is committed to becoming a diverse and truly inclusive organisation; fostering an environment and working culture that celebrates and promotes diversity and inclusion.  We strive to create a workplace where our colleagues and volunteers can truly be themselves and feel like they belong and constantly seek to ensure all voices are heard.

To embrace this culture of diversity, our employee and volunteer recruitment should reflect our stakeholders and the society that we serve and support, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, disabilities or religious practices. We value individual diversity and are actively building diverse teams here at Carers UK and value our colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds.

As a membership charity for carers, we particularly seek employees and volunteers with a real understanding of the issues faced by carers. Reasonable adjustments can be made to the process and role, dependent on the needs of the applicant.

We are proud to be an Employers for Carers member. We have signed the Menopause Workplace Pledge and achieved the Disability Confident Employer accreditation. We aim to offer interviews to those who have a disability covered under the definition outlined in the Equality Act 2010 and who meet the minimum criteria for the role. The minimum criteria can be found under the Essential section of the Person Specification of the recruitment pack. Please let us know if your application is being made under the Disability Confident Scheme. You are not required to share the nature of your disability or long term health condition. You will need to state in your email application that you are making your application under the Disability Confident Scheme as you consider yourself to be disabled, or as having a disability. If you meet the minimum criteria then you will be offered an interview.

At Carers UK we want our application process to be as accessible as possible. If you need any adjustments to apply please contact us to discuss.  

The closing date for applications is 5pm, Tuesday 18 August.

Carers UK anonymises all applications prior to shortlisting.

Carers UK reserves the right to appoint at any stage, should an outstanding candidate emerge.

Carers UK are actively interviewing as we receive applications.

Carers UK may carry out online and social media checks before a formal offer is made.