About Us

The National Lottery Community Fund is the largest community funder in the UK - we’re proud to award money raised by players of The National Lottery  to communities across the UK. Last year alone we gave out over half a billion pounds (£508.5 million) of National Lottery funding to over 11,000 community projects across the UK, enabling even more people and communities to bring their ideas and ambitions to life. We support a wide range of health, educational, environmental, and charitable projects with grants ranging from as little as £500 to multi-million-pound programmes. 86% of our new grants were for less than £10k.

At the heart of everything we do is the belief that when people are in the lead, communities thrive. National Lottery funding is open to everyone and we’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of grassroots groups right up to large UK-wide charities. We have changed how we work across the Fund to help us serve people and communities more effectively, working flexibly and on their terms; working closer to communities.

Are you a confident communicator who enjoys working with a wide range people?

Do you see the potential in ideas as well as the challenges?

Are you passionate about your community? 

The National Lottery Community is looking for a Funding Officer to join our Midlands regional team and work in across an area covering the City of Nottingham to ensure that our funding responds to what matters to our local communities. You will build long-term relationships with people and organisations, talk about their ideas and ambitions and assess funding requests providing useful feedback and support.

About the Role

Funding Officers are responsible for our grant-making activity, including pre-application support, assessment, grant management and shared learning. You will ensure that our funding responds to the local context as well as challenging yourself and colleagues to continually improve the way we work across the Midlands region.

You will build long term relationships with people and organisations in the area you cover. This will include reaching out to new groups, supporting people who are applying, and continuing the relationship after a grant has been awarded.

You will be responsible for understanding how an organisation’s ideas align with our funding priorities and making good judgements about when to take an application further or when to signpost to other opportunities.

You will combine local knowledge, understanding of best practice and the experience of grant holders to make informed recommendations about who and what we fund.

You will represent the Fund within your local area including at funding fairs and external meetings and create opportunities for people to come together. You will share learning from your conversations, events, grant holder reports and evaluations with other colleagues so that we can maximise our impact (COVID-19 dependant).

You’ll be part of a team of Funding Officers, led by a Funding Manager.

Contract: Permanent

Hours per week: 37 hours per week, flexible working considered

Interview date: 7 September

Essential Criteria

• Strong written and verbal communication skills and confidence to operate in a wide range of environments
• Ability to build and maintain excellent relationships at a number of different levels
• Ability to manage your own time and workload with minimal supervision
• Confidence to use your judgement, take initiative and challenge when appropriate

Desirable Criteria

• Assessment and reporting writing
• Demonstrate sound IT skills and the ability to learn detailed processes

For You

We seek to develop our staff and offer a wide range of personal development opportunities.

We offer a wide range of generous benefits including:

• Generous annual leave and company pension scheme
• Flexible working to support staff with their work/life balance, taking into account things such as caring responsibilities, worship and attendance at religious festivals
• Enhanced paid maternity, paternity and adoption leave
• Season ticket and cycle to work loans
• Paid volunteering leave

How to Apply

Visit our website on The National Lottery Community Fund for further details about the vacancy and our application process.

Equal Opportunities

Equality, diversity and inclusion in our grant-making, and amongst our people, are all vital to our success in supporting people and communities to thrive.  We believe our people should represent the communities, organisations and individuals we work with.  We are committed to being an inclusive and great place to work, and recognise our people come from diverse backgrounds. We are a Disability Confident employer and positively welcome applications from disabled people.