Policy researcher jobs in billingham, stockton on tees

Fundraising Manager 

Salary: starting from £36,853 to £39,669 depending on experience (0.8 FTE considered)

Permanent, home-based (with regular travel). 

About Voice 21

Speaking and listening skills underpin our success in school, work and throughout our lives. Developing young people’s oracy skills equips them with the tools needed to navigate education systems, pursue career ambitions and achieve their potential. Like reading, writing and maths, oracy is an essential, foundational building block that prepares young people to thrive in society.

Despite extensive evidence that high quality oracy education increases students’ confidence, wellbeing, engagement, progress and attainment, oracy is not an essential, everyday feature of every child’s school experience. Unlike literacy and numeracy, it is not commonly understood and provision across the system is not universal or consistent. This disadvantages children from low income backgrounds, who are significantly more likely than their better-off peers to start school without vital oracy skills.

Voice 21 is the national oracy education charity. We exist to enable economically disadvantaged pupils in the UK to develop the necessary oracy skills to thrive in education and beyond. We do this primarily by building the capacity and motivation of teachers and schools to provide high quality oracy education for every child, every day. Great teaching is the most important lever schools have to improve outcomes for their pupils. We train thousands of teachers each year and support their schools to sustainably embed our evidenced approach. We focus where we can make the most difference, in schools with the highest numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals.

Since Voice 21 was established by educators in 2015, we have grown rapidly to become the UK’s trusted oracy education experts, upskilling teachers, promoting excellence in schools, setting the standard and spearheading national change. Our mission is to secure every child’s entitlement to a high quality oracy education. To achieve this, alongside delivery of our flagship Oracy Schools programme, we share our learning widely, add to the compelling evidence base for oracy, work to influence public awareness and help shape education policy. 

About this opportunity

Help us make oracy education an everyday entitlement for every child, in every school, by growing and diversifying Voice 21’s voluntary funding. 

As Voice 21 embarks on its ambitious next five-year strategy, we are looking to strengthen our team with a talented and ambitious Fundraising Manager. Your role will support the Head of Fundraising, CEO and wider team to develop new sources of high value support for Voice 21, working flexibly across trusts and foundations, corporate and philanthropic fundraising.

The successful candidate will demonstrate a knack for identifying funding opportunities and discovering new prospects. With excellent research, communication and relationship-building skills, you’ll work collaboratively with senior colleagues to strengthen our pipeline and drive long term growth in voluntary income. You’ll also contribute your ideas and initiative to develop and deliver compelling engagement opportunities for current and potential supporters, and lead on reporting impact to funders. Ultimately the post-holder is expected to grow in this role, to manage their own portfolio of high value donors. 

You’ll be joining the fundraising team at an exciting time as we look to build out the function in the coming years. The Head of Fundraising has been in post just over a year, and has put solid foundations in place to support long term growth. With a healthy pipeline already developed for the current and next financial year, you’ll have plenty of lead time to find your feet, with a realistic (shared) fundraising target of securing c.£500K of new voluntary income in 2027. There is significant untapped potential in fundraising for Voice 21. This is a great opportunity for an adaptable, proactive fundraiser to make their mark, gaining experience and developing expertise across high value streams. 

Key responsibilities

• Research and develop a qualified pipeline of trust/foundation and corporate prospects to ensure we achieve voluntary income targets in 2027/28 and beyond. 

• Draft winning funding bids and support the Head of Fundraising and/or CEO to develop compelling proposals and/or pitches. 

• Support and manage the CEO to lead relationships with funders and prospects.

• Lead on managing the funder reporting cycle and ensuring we deliver on our funding agreements, producing timely and inspiring impact reports.

• Drive awareness and understanding of fundraising internally by making connections with colleagues across the organisation and working collaboratively to support achieving fundraising goals. 

• Maintain the quality of data in the fundraising team CRM (Salesforce), managing contacts and pipelines through the database and producing accessible reports on fundraising performance and forecasts. 

Essential knowledge and skills

• Previous high value fundraising experience (trusts and foundations, corporates or philanthropy), with a track record of successfully securing significant donations and achieving income targets.

• Demonstrated ability to maintain a varied workload, deliver to deadlines, and successfully manage multiple work streams and projects.

• Strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, with the confidence and evidenced ability to be able to nurture and maintain successful relationships with high value external stakeholders and senior colleagues. 

• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with an ability to translate complex projects and/or ideas into accessible and persuasive narratives that inspire and motivate. 

• The instincts and initiative to spot and seize fundraising opportunities; with the resilience, flexibility and tenacity to guide long term fundraising activities through to successful outcomes. 

• Passionate about reducing educational inequalities and transforming learning and life chances for young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Where you’ll work: All Voice 21 staff work remotely and this is a home-based role. Regular travel to our central London office (by Victoria station) is expected for meetings. Regular travel to visit our projects in schools and/or to meet funders will also be expected. Occasional overnight stays may be required too. Voice 21 pays travel and accommodation expenses. The package of salary and expenses will be considered when agreeing a starting salary with the successful candidate. 

Contract: Permanent, subject to successful probation review after three months.

Why work for Voice 21?

Tackle a vital challenge, with great people. Voice 21 exists to transform childrens’ learning and life chances through talk and we are aiming to be working with 2,000 schools a year by 2025. To reach this goal we recruit great people and give them real responsibility, training and support. 

Output focused culture, with flexible working opportunities. We have an agile and flexible approach, our team can work when and wherever works best to deliver the requirements of their role. For staff working at home, we support them to create a workspace and provide technology that enables them to work effectively. 

Real development opportunities. We believe in supporting people to develop the skills they need to be excellent – whether this means funding external training, finding a mentor to support them or giving them the time to learn from others in the organisations through our regular CPD sessions. We also offer paid study leave for team members taking part in formal studies outside of work. 

Great benefits. 36 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays and Christmas closure period). Holiday entitlement increases linked to length of service, 5% employer contribution to pension, interest-free season ticket, cycle and technology loans, employee assistance scheme. 

Remuneration. Our pay is a band and spine point approach where there is up to 7 years progression available (depending on starting point) 

Application details 

To apply:  Application is by CV and cover letter (which should be maximum two sides of A4). Applicants are advised to carefully consider the job description before applying, tailoring your CV and cover letter to demonstrate clearly how you match the specification for this role. Applicants who do not address how they match the essential knowledge and skills listed above, are unlikely to progress to interview. 

Closing date:  9am Monday 23rd June

Interview dates:  

• 1st round informal interviews will be virtual (via Zoom), scheduled on either Tues 1st or Weds 2nd July.  Questions will be shared in advance so candidates can prepare their answers. 

• 2nd round panel interview, also virtual, will be scheduled on either Tues 8th or Weds 9th July. Candidates invited to the 2nd round may be asked to prepare a short presentation as part of the interview – a brief for which will be shared in advance, after the 1st round.

Questions: Please contact Voice 21’s Head of Fundraising, Deborah Benson, if you would like to discuss this opportunity before applying

Valuing every voice

Voice 21 believes that every voice should be heard and valued. We are committed to the equal treatment of all current and prospective employees and do not condone discrimination on the basis of age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, or marriage and civil partnership. 

Voice 21 is a diverse and inclusive workplace and we strongly encourage suitably qualified applicants from a wide range of backgrounds to apply and join us. By offering a salary range, we demonstrate our commitment to considering a wide range of applicants who may bring different perspectives and levels of experience.

Sands exists to save babies’ lives and ensure that anyone affected by pregnancy loss or baby death receives the support and care they need.

We are looking to recruit a Technology Business Partner. The post-holder will play a pivotal role in driving modern Ways of Working and fostering technology adoption across the organisation. This hybrid position blends the responsibilities of a Business Analyst, Solutions Architect, Technical Trainer, and Mentor.

Acting as a vital link between technical teams and end users, the Technology Business Partner ensures that technology solutions are not only implemented effectively but are also embraced and utilised to their full potential.

Working closely with stakeholders across the organisation, you will take the time to understand each teams unique dynamics, operational objectives and technology needs, mapping out their processes and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

With strong experience in Microsoft 365, you will be confident in utilising tools such as Teams and SharePoint to enable individuals and departments to streamline and enhance their ways of working. You will play a key role in enabling and embedding digital working practices across Sands, helping to ensure the technology available supports day-to-day operations and long term strategic goals.

You will also be able to cope with demanding situations and work to tight deadlines, with the ability to think outside of the box and demonstrate an agile approach.

This is an exciting and-high profile role which offers a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference to the work of Sands.

The Grants Officer will support the Senior Manager to develop and implement monitoring and reporting
processes across the Foundation’s grant-giving activities. To be successful in the role, you must have
excellent knowledge of results-based monitoring and reporting, demonstrate strong organisational and
administrative skills, and ideally have experience working with colleagues from different cultural
backgrounds.

The initial focus of the role will be monitoring and reporting in relation to the implementation of a Big 6
EU funded programme, the Youth Empowerment Fund (YEF). This programme focuses on supporting
youth-led initiatives, giving young people the means to be effective agents of change. The YEF is global
in its reach but will focus on supporting local solutions and grassroots initiatives that young people
develop on the ground. The Officer will play a key role in supporting the Senior Manager to maintain and
grow Big 6 advocacy and partnerships for the short and long-term. This role will also work closely with
colleagues from the Operations and Finance team to ensure accurate information is delivered to key
stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities 

Youth Empowerment Fund (60%):

• Support the monitoring and reporting of the EU funded YEF programme. Including coordinationwithin the IAF and with the Big 6 designated leads.
• Communicating with and activating networks of national organizations to participate in the YEF,including sharing opportunities to take part in Big 6 advocacy activities and applying for youthled solutions open-call Local Solutions grants.
• Issuing of grants to successful national organizations and monitoring and evaluation, including regular reporting on outcomes and impact of national projects to the YEF project team.
• Sharing success stories from the YEF to support the Big 6 communication, storytelling and creative reporting efforts.

Other Grant based support (40%):

• Oversee grant-giving financial processes, creating and issuing of grant payments.
• Support the Senior Operations Manager with the reporting of grant activities for Senior Management and various stakeholders.
• Support the ongoing development of other Foundation grant reporting efforts as required.
• Undertake any other duties as may reasonably be required for the successful delivery of the Foundation’s business objectives.

Unifrog’s mission 

We’re on a mission to level the playing field when it comes to young people finding and applying for their next step after school. We're achieving this by bringing all the available information into one single, impartial, user-friendly platform that helps students to make the best choices, and submit the strongest applications. We also empower teachers and counselors to manage the progression process effectively.

Our outlook is global - we work with schools and universities all over the world, from the US to New Zealand, and from Italy to Hong Kong. We want to make it so that young people can compare every opportunity taught in English, wherever it is in the world, and have all the support they need to make successful applications.

We have a clear social purpose, and we’re hugely ambitious. We already work with over half of UK secondary schools, and hundreds of international schools. We are growing rapidly in terms of the number of our customers, in terms of how much they use our platform, and in terms of the breadth of products we offer (check out this video to hear more about the Unifrog platform).

Our team is at the heart of our business and is integral to our success. We work hard to foster a culture of openness, happiness and innovation, and we commit to helping every individual learn and grow so that they can reach their full potential. We want to hire talented people, whatever their background. If you are excited by our mission and are ready to work hard, please don’t hesitate to apply. We look forward to hearing from you!

We believe in the power of diversity. If you are from an ethnic minority background, we would like to strongly encourage you to apply.

Teaching Resources at Unifrog

One of the most important parts of Unifrog is a searchable library of hundreds of teaching resources, covering careers guidance, progression, SEL, and PSHE. 

Each week the lessons are used by tens of thousands of teachers in the UK and around the world. 

We aim for our lessons to be plug-and-play, to be truly educational, to make it easy for schools to make the most of the Unifrog platform, and to be fun even when they deal with difficult subjects. We always try to make the learning as active as possible.

In December 2023, we launched our Courses tool. Students can browse and take short online courses in a range of engaging and challenging topic areas, many of which are created in partnership with universities and employers.

We create courses that fit into five main strands:

• ‘Careers in…’ courses introduce students to a career sector and spotlight a few specific roles within the sector, e.g. ‘Careers in art’. 

• University subject tasters give students an idea of what studying a particular university subject is like, e.g. ‘The complicated reality of criminology’.

• Life skills courses help students prepare for life after school/college, e.g. ‘Preparing for the workplace’.

• Virtual work experience courses combine a series of work-based tasks and live webinars with an employer, e.g. ‘Virtual work experience with the BBC’.

• Teacher/counselor courses help staff members in various roles get the most out of the Unifrog platform.

The role and responsibilities

As Teaching Resources Creator, your main focus will be creating and editing teaching resources and courses. Topics will include:

• Careers guidance

• University, college and apprenticeship applications

• PSHE and SEL

• Skills

• Revision 

• Work experience

You will be expected to create lessons and courses to a high standard, which will involve: 

• Researching the topic

• Producing content in line with our teaching and learning standards and Resource Library handbook 

• Responding to feedback from your line manager, from others on the Unifrog team, from employer/HE partners, and from teachers in our partner schools.

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What we’re looking for

• Essential: QTS and relevant secondary school teaching experience

You must have Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and a minimum of 3 years teaching experience across at least two key stages from KS3-5.

• Adept at creating exceptional teaching resources 

Above all else, you need to be brilliant at creating teaching resources, and to love doing it. You will have had significant professional experience creating teaching resources, and delivering them to students.

• Creativity

We want you to come up with great ideas for how to teach topics to students in fun ways.

• Quest for feedback

We want to be as close to our users as possible. You’ll be able to seek out feedback from colleagues, teachers, and students.

• Attention to detail

You will have excellent writing and proofreading skills.

• Ability to work in a team

You’ll regularly ask team members for their input; to do this, you need to be an excellent communicator and team player.

• Ability to work independently

Creating hundreds of brilliant teaching materials is a long-term project that requires organisation, discipline, and resilience.

• Ability to work to tight deadlines

We’re really excited about our upcoming projects. We have a long list of them to get done, and many have strict deadlines. You need to be able to deliver things on time.
 

Working together

You’ll work in our existing Teaching Resources team, which consists of experienced teachers and resource creators. You’ll also be in regular contact with the Written Content team, plus people on our marketing, sales, account management, and strategy teams.

In the Teaching Resources team, we commonly brainstorm new ideas as a group, share insights from our own teaching experiences, provide feedback on other team members’ work, and get feedback from teachers and students at our partner schools.

You’ll be managed by the Head of Teaching Resources.
 

Benefits

Go to our jobs page for a full list of the excellent benefits we offer our team.

• Join one of ‘the best organisations to escape to’ and help transform careers and destinations in schools. We’re also a certified Great Place to Work.

• Become part of a committed, dynamic, and growing company. We want to build our team for the long term: if you do well, we will do our best to make sure you want to stay at the company for a long time.

• Professional development is important at Unifrog. You will define your own 6-month objectives and will be supported by your line manager and the rest of the team to achieve them. You will have an annual training allowance to spend on what you need to grow and progress.

• Influence the company’s direction: we love to promote great ideas, wherever they come from.

• Play a role in democratising access to learning: Unifrog makes a difference in young people’s lives. Every week you’ll have your work in front of hundreds of thousands of students, and tens of thousands of teachers.
   

Key details

• £36,000-£38,000 per annum pro rata (Grade B) and a share in a company-wide performance bonus. 

• 28 days paid holiday per year (plus bank holidays) (pro rata).

• 12 month FTC.

• Full time (please note we are unable to consider part-time applicants).

• Working hours are 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday to Thursday, and 9:00am to 4:30pm on Friday. 

• Work remotely, or flexibly in our London office.

• Start date: We're looking for someone to start as soon as possible but you must be available from 1st of October at the latest.

• To discuss any details about the role before applying, please contact Mhairi (details on our website).

• We can only consider candidates who have the right to work in the UK.

Application process

• Deadline: 10:00AM (BST) on Tuesday 24th June 2025.

• Stage 1: Application form (~1 hour) ✍️

• Visit our website to upload your CV and complete the questions and tasks below. Please note that we do not review CVs at this stage of the application process so please be as specific as possible about your experience.

• i. With reference to examples of your recent experience, what would make you an excellent candidate for this role? (250 words)

• ii. Upload one complete, standalone lesson PowerPoint on a careers/PSHE/SEL topic of your choice, which fulfils these criteria:

  • 30 minute lesson;

  • Includes notes for teachers delivering the lesson;

  • States the intended secondary year group audience on the first slide;

  • Is well-structured, clear, and written to a high standard; and

  • Supports the teacher in being plug-and-play and informative about the topic you’ve chosen.

  • You can send us an existing lesson PowerPoint, there is no need to create anything new or align your presentation to Unifrog's visual identity. There is also no need to provide accompanying worksheets, handouts, etc.

  • Your presentation can be in either PowerPoint or Google slides format. Please provide a dropbox or google drive link to your presentation, ensuring you have set access permissions to “anyone with the link can view”. 

• iii. We’re creating a course for 14-16 year old students who want to learn more about what it means to be self-employed in the UK. Section 1 of the course, which explains what self-employment is, has already been written.

  • Your task is to write part of Section 2 of the course, which will explain the advantages and disadvantages of being self-employed.

  • Write 250 words to be included in Section 2, either on:

  • the main advantages of being self-employed

  • OR

  • the main disadvantages of being self-employed

  • Feel free to use headings and bullet points to structure your writing. Do not add activities.

• Stage 2: Task (~ 2 hours)

• Stage 3: Video call interview (1 hour) ��

• Standard Q&A from a panel of three, including questions about your experiences and how these relate to the role, and scenario questions based on common situations you might face (plus time for your questions)

• Stage 2 tasks will be scheduled after the application deadline. Video call interviews will be held on 7th July 2025.

• Your answers are an opportunity to let us know more about your motivations and experience. While we understand that candidates might want to use AI to improve parts of their application, we strongly encourage you to write your answers independently. 

• Please note, we compare all answers to an AI generated answer. Where we suspect AI has been used to write the majority of the answer, this will be taken into consideration when scoring

Inclusion and diversity at Unifrog

• Within the company we try to foster a culture of innovation, and a happy working environment, both because this is the right thing to do, and because we think this results in the most effective team. To this end we believe in open communication, celebrating successes, supporting each other, not being afraid to be wrong or to fail, and promoting good ideas wherever they come from.

• As a platform that supports teachers and students from a huge variety of backgrounds it’s important that our team and leadership reflects this diversity. This is something we are actively working towards and prioritising. We want to embed diversity, equity and inclusion across everything we do, continually evaluating policies and practices to make sure they are inclusive and equitable.

• To make sure everyone’s voice is heard and people have the opportunities to learn to be better allies in the workplace, we encourage the team to share what they’re celebrating, facilitate training and group discussions, and seek regular feedback about what more the company could do to help people feel included.

• To ensure that our recruitment process is consistent and fair, we anonymise your application and therefore do not see your name, personal, educational or professional background. We also randomise the order of responses so that it’s less likely that a candidate is advantaged or disadvantaged by where their answers appear compared to other candidates.