Programme Accountant Jobs in Manchester

Location: Remote (based in England & Wales with occasional travel for biannual team days and biannual departmental team meetings in various locations)
Salary: £28,665 - £30,865 pro rata (£11,466 - £12,346 actual)
Hours of work: 2 days per week (14 hours)
Contract type: Permanent

Why work for Kids Matter?

• Generous annual leave – 25 days (plus bank holidays) per year pro rata, with time off between Christmas and New Year's additional to this allowance.
• Remote working contribution – receive £26/month pro rata towards the costs of working from home and/or using a co-working space.
• Access to coaching sessions, training opportunities and our Employee Assistance Programme (a confidential support service for staff).
• Flexible working across weekdays to suit your schedule.

About us

Kids Matter is one of the UK’s fastest growing children’s charities.

Our vision is to see every child in need raised in a strong family. Our mission is to reduce the impact of poverty on children through community-based parenting programmes.

Research shows that group-based early intervention parenting groups are the most effective way to support children in need. We train peer facilitators in local churches - the largest voluntary body in the country - to run our affordable, accessible and highly effective parenting programmes, written by Clinical Psychologists. They come alongside parents and carers, building long-lasting community in addition to encouraging confidence and learning positive parenting skills.

We value difference and diversity, and we want our workplace to be built on shared values of equality and mutual trust, with team members representing the wide range of backgrounds and experiences that exist within the UK. We therefore actively encourage applications from people of diverse backgrounds and varied experiences, particularly those who are African, Afro-Caribbean, Asian or part of other minority ethnic communities, who have lived experience of the impact of low-income/low-support circumstances, and who are living with a disability or identify as being neurodivergent.

About the role

The Finance Manager role involves:

• Overseeing day-to-day charity finance functions
• Managing expenses, payments and payroll processes
• Communicating and presenting financial reports and information

About you

Do you have accounting experience and strong numerical skills? Are you looking for an opportunity to use your financial expertise in a charity setting? Are you a Christian with an active faith in Jesus? Do you have a passion for Kids Matter’s vision of seeing every child in need raised in a strong family?

Then we would love to hear from you!

How to apply

You can apply for the Finance Manager position by clicking ‘Apply via Website’ and completing a copy of our online application form.

The deadline for applications is 10am Monday 23 September 2024. All successful and unsuccessful applicants will be notified by email.

We also ask for all applicants to submit an Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form, which will be sent to you to complete following the submission of your application. This form will be used for anonymous analysis to ensure our overall recruitment procedures are fair and transparent. It will never be viewed or used as part of the selection process. It is optional to submit this form.

If you would like any application/interview support or you need any reasonable adjustments throughout the application process, or if you would like an informal phone call to ask questions or discuss the role, please contact Katie Washington (HR & Systems Coordinator).

Please see the job pack for more details on the role and application process.

In this role you’ll be both strategic and hands-on, solely managing the financial controls for this small charity with a £350k annual turnover.  You will support the Director and senior management team through your management of financial processes, policy and planning.

This will include using accountancy software to process income and expenditure, producing management accounts for the senior management team and Board, and ensuring the charity reports to its key funders, including Arts Council England. 

You’ll process payroll for our small team of 6 employees, taking care of liaison with HMRC as well as handling external audit and company filing.

Who are we looking for? 

We’re looking for someone with focus, efficiency and precision to take responsibility of our company finances.

Unfazed by working mostly alone, you’ll be incredibly organised with your time and workload to ensure processes are handled in a timely and accurate fashion. Ideally, you’ll be passionate about the work that we do both as a professional arts organisation and also as a small charity based in Bedfordshire with altruistic values.

You’ll have experience of working with small organisations and charities, knowledgeable about the areas of financial control that you will be our expert on.

The role is an employee position for one day per week, however we are open to discuss flexibility of working hours and the possibility of freelance working with the successful candidate.

We actively encourage people from a variety of backgrounds with different experiences, skills and stories to join us and influence our working practice. We are particularly keen to hear from people from backgrounds that are currently under-represented on our staff team including people from UK minority ethnic backgrounds and candidates who self-identify as disabled, male, non-binary or trans and/or LGBTQ+.

Application deadline: 9am, Mon 30th Sept 2024

Interviews: Thurs 3rd October 2024

Terms and Conditions   

Hours of Work: 7.5 hours per week (1 day).  These hours can be worked flexibly.      

Contract: This is a permanent employment contract with a 3 month probationary period.    

Salary: The full-time equivalent salary for this position is £40,000 – 45,000 per annum (pro rata to 7.5 hours per week).        

Location: Home-working.

Benefits:  

BCA offers 25 days holiday per annum plus bank holidays (pro rata for part-time employees).   

We offer a NEST pension scheme with a 3% employer contribution.   

Access to IT & equipment to enable efficient home-working can be provided.      

Proof of the right to work in the UK will be required before appointment.     

Transforming Lives for Good (TLG) is a national Christian charity working in partnership with local churches to give struggling children a hope and a future. An exciting opportunity has arisen for an individual to join our award winning (Sunday Times Best Not for Profit to work for) team as Head of Finance. We’re looking for a commercially minded and relational leader capable of developing the finance team and bringing strategic financial leadership to the organisation at every level.

To join our dynamic staff team, we are looking for an individual with clear systematic thinking and ability to embed system changes in an increasingly complex organisation. You’ll enjoy working in a growth context and come with an entrepreneurial, problem-solving mindset and the high expectations that inspire excellence in all those around you. As a key member of the Wider Leadership Team, you will play a central role in developing the financial leadership and culture throughout our organisation with outstanding judgement and integrity. If this sounds like you and you share our passion to see UK churches transforming the lives of struggling children, then we would love to hear from you.

TLG is a Christian charity hence, we are looking for individuals with a strong and vibrant Christian faith. As part of our commitment to safeguarding, the successful applicant will be required to undertake an enhanced disclosure via the DBS.

We would welcome applications from candidates from diverse backgrounds to enable us to better reflect the needs of the communities we serve.

We’re looking for a highly-skilled techy, people-person. Someone who loves to build, develop and problem solve with tech tools, while taking greatest satisfaction from seeing others succeed because of the help, support and encouragement you’ve given them.

You have strong confidence with CRM, data interpretation, manipulation and automation tools, alongside experience as a trainer or teacher. Combined with creativity and excitement for improving existing systems and building new ideas from the ground up.

Our current business and data systems have evolved as the community has grown over the last 5 years. Now we’re in a really strong position to do more, and do it better. To harness the power of our diverse community data so that we can know, serve and delight our members. Supporting them to learn more and meet others in the same role so that they can have maximum impact in their own schools for their own students.

Starting as 2 days per week Oct 2024 - Apr 2025, our desire is that the success and vision of the person appointed to this new role will make it possible to transition to a longer-term contract for increased # days . That is to say, the opportunity is there, it is for you to run with.

About We Are In Beta.

We Are In Beta is an online community of 18,800+ school leaders and teachers which helps them share and learn how they get the best outcomes for their students.

We believe most of the solutions to schools’ problems are in schools already. Or at least, in the minds of the brilliant people who work in them.

Our job is to find them and share them widely, so nobody has to figure it out on their own.

Imagine a day when you can find someone - or something  - that can help solve any problem you’re facing, whenever you need it.

A day when every student has leaders and teachers who are equipped with the most successful strategies and networks to improve their education.

Join us to help us build that future for our schools.

We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning.
 

What do we do?

To work towards that future:

1. We research great practice so our members can discover it and be inspired by it.

2. We produce and share practical content with great schools through events, webinars, podcasts and resources - so they can learn from others’ successes (and the failures too).

3. We build communities of practice so colleagues can meet and grow together

Some stats we’re really proud of:

In just 4 years we’ve grown the online community to over 18,800 school leaders and teachers.

• 3,400 - MATs and schools we are connected to

• 2500+ resources have been shared by our members - if each one on average takes two hours produce - in reality it's probably more - that’s more than… 

• 3.1 years' worth of others’ work each and every one of our members can access just by being a part of the community

• 3,710 policies and resources from successful schools and MATs we have curated, analysed and shared.

• £1,500 - the amount we save a school each time they access the research they ask us to do for them.

• 870,000 hours - the number of hours it would have taken members to discover the insights we've shared with them had they done the research on their own in silos.

• £25 million - the amount it would have cost schools had they funded those research hours themselves 

• 1.5 million - the number of miles our members would have had to have travelled to meet our expert presenters in case study schools had our community not existed online.

• 8,500 people came to the National INSET Day in Dec 2020 when the government left schools with almost no time at all to plan an end of term INSET. 

We are just getting started. Join us to write the next chapter

What's the role?

As Head of Business and Data systems you will lead every aspect of our data and information management across a portfolio of platforms. 

Working to ensure they speak to each other in smart and powerful ways, all offering team members and company the most up-to-date and high quality insight into the needs, priorities and challenges of members of the We Are In Beta community.

How you’ll be driving our mission forward (your responsibilities)

A. 40% making our current business and data systems work really well

• Lead data management and consistency across all systems, including 

  • Automated and manual flows needed for business activities and reporting

  • Run and refine processes for data health of contact and company records

  • Review and consolidate CRM properties, processes and protocols

• Refine and add new automations to capture most useful data instantly and robustly

• Regular cycle of updates of DfE data on schools and trust performance and demographics

B. 40% develop, improve and build out current systems to be more powerful, robust and sharp

• Develop our new newsletter platform - combining all channels into one place

  • Manage migration of current audiences

  • Design process for adding and removing subscribers, with data flow between CRM and newsletter

  • Unlock power of analytics on who is opening, reading and sharing our messages the most vs the least

• Augment sales process with increased automation

  • Identify and implement opportunities to streamline current processes

  • Automate routine steps where possible, maximsing face-to-face input for greatest return

• Iterate Airtable architecture to streamline data tools and increase robustness

  • Review of all DfE data held, processed and linked tables

  • Review back-up processes

• Research and deployment of wide-ranging new platforms/software that can supercharge how we work, maximising impact for our members and customers.

  • Explore options for eg data visualisation platforms for self-service access for members, member match-making, content hosting and discovery….plus many more.

C. 20% support the team to improve quality, efficiency and impact of how they use data and systems to succeed in their roles

• Provide training, support, and guidance to help the team achieve their data and CRM goals in the most effective ways possible.
• Understand the team's and individuals' working practices and pain points, offering improvements or hacks for using current systems, or recommending new systems that can help them achieve even greater success.
• Create email lists, campaigns, sequences, and workflows in collaboration with the team - whether handling the more complex tasks as commissioned work or acting as a guide, trainer, or enabler for straightforward ones.
• Build or update existing Airtable bases to consolidate member and school data for dedicated projects or programmes.
• Explore any and all methods to help the team leverage data to better understand, serve, and delight our members.

The platforms we use now

• Hubspot - for CRM, marketing, sales and subscription management

• Airtable - for data visualisation and manipulation, programme management and content libraries

• Mighty Networks - to host our online community

• Zapier - to automate connections between services and systems

• Substack - 2 weekly newsletters (with third starting this Autumn)

• Mail Chimp - 1 weekly newsletter

• Social Media - principally LinkedIn and Twitter

• G-suite - for email hosting, and all internal and external documentation

• Slack - for internal collaboration and messaging

• Xero - for accounting and invoicing

• Stripe and GoCardless - for payments

We also use a small number of scripts in Python to allow us to do more quickly and better. Principally focused on large data-set consolidation / pivots and file scraping.

Who are you?

• You are techy to a strong level of competence but, most importantly, driven to identify, interrogate and fix issues, learning more as you go.

• You are a creative, pragmatic and diligent problem solver. Not always seeking the fanciest solution, instead finding the one that works well and the wider team can use.

• In this, you are a big picture thinker on what and how your actions iterate and build towards a ‘perfect’ future system, maximising how We Are In Beta can have the greatest impact for school leaders and teachers we serve (our members and customers).

• You are a strong trainer and communicator who loves to help and support others to succeed for themselves.

• You understand enough, and be keen to learn more, on features and quirks of education datasets for school demographics and performance.

• You leave your ego at the door, instead taking a straight-forward approach to ask great questions, say when you don't know and be upfront when you change your mind.

• You are a self-starter with great personal organisation who plans, tracks and delivers on objectives across several workflows on time, every time.

• You bring entrepreneurial flair to see the opportunity of building this role into a long-term member of the team by unlocking the power and potential of how our systems can best serve us and our members.

What experience and track record do you have?

It’s not essential you tick every box. But the more boxes you can tick the better. It goes without saying, we can help you gain and learn from the experiences you haven’t had yet.

• Proven experience across CRM, databases, community/content platforms, newsletter distribution, integration and automation tools. This could be from previous roles such as data analytics, community building, digital marketing or business transformation.

• Comfortable with principles of coding in Python but no need to be a pro.

• Strong understanding of data management and GDPR requirements.

• Led digital transformation/change projects, with a strong approach to project management and stakeholder engagement.

• Designed and delivered training, and/or produced clear and concise written user guides, taking time to understand the needs and starting points of the team.

• Experience with management, analysis and visualisation of large-scale data sets - ideally in educational outcomes/performance.

• Experience of the realities of working for an early-stage organisation without a big team or huge budget. We are especially interested in those who have grown a tech team/function from the ground up.

Our expectation is that you have worked within the school education sector in England, though we are open to applicants who have not if you can show you have a good base of knowledge of the needs of school teachers and leaders.

What are the benefits?

• Opportunity to work within an early-stage, mission-driven organisation and shape its direction. With scope to grow this role in your own image to be your dream job at the end of the initial period.

• Fully remote, flexible working culture/flexible working hours.

• Pro rata £35,000-£38,000 dependent on experience

• Project-based and/or freelance contract based on performance milestones available for the right candidate

• This role is 2 days per week October 2024 - April 2025, with scope for it to grow into a long-term contract for more days per week.

We are an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants equally without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status or disability status.

Location:

We are a fully remote team in the UK and Italy. We check-in daily online. We meet regularly face to face in London. 

Timeline

• Applications open: Monday 2nd September 2024

• Deadline for applications: midnight Sunday 22nd September

• First round interviews: starting from 23rd September, finishing by 4th October

• Second round interviews: starting from 30th September, finishing by 4th October

• Notification of decision /appointment: week beginning 7th October

• Start date: as soon as possible after 14th October.

We expect this to be a popular role.

We will be inviting people to interview on a rolling basis.

We advise submitting an application early.

How do you apply?

  To apply for the role please

1. register your interest via our website no later than midday on Thursday 5th September AND/OR
2. complete the application form that we'll send you by Sunday 22nd September

For the application form you’ll need:

1. CV - max 2 sides

2. Covering letter - outlining

   • why you want to apply

   • how your values, knowledge, skills and experience make you the best person for the role.

3. Contact details of references

For an informal and confidential discussion about the role prior to application, DM Frances Ling on LinkedIn.