First Give
First Give is a national charity that empowers young people to make a positive difference to the causes they care about. We do this by partnering with secondary schools across England and Wales, delivering a fully resourced programme that inspires an entire year group to connect with local charities and take meaningful social action - from fundraising and volunteering to campaigning and raising awareness.
Each programme culminates in a celebratory School Final, where student teams present their projects to an audience of peers, teachers, and guests. The winning class is awarded a £1,000 First Give grant for their chosen charity - but every participating student contributes to their community and gains skills, confidence, and a deeper understanding of social issues. We currently partner with over 200 schools each year, helping thousands of young people become active, engaged citizens
This is an exciting time for First Give, as we have recently launched our three-year strategy and our ambition to activate the generosity of a million young people by 2034. In order to meet the requirements of the organisation for this ambitious growth a new 3 year fundraising strategy has been developed which includes expanding and diversifying our fundraising streams into Corporate and HNWI. We have also recently launched recruitment for a Fundraising Campaign Board Chair. The Campaign, A Route to A Million, aims to raise an additional £1.5 million over the next 3 years. We are also embarking on an ambitious regional growth strategy to grow and deliver our programme to more young people than ever across England and Wales.
Team Administrator
We are seeking an enthusiastic, proactive and motivated administrator who would like a varied role. The successful candidate will provide cross-departmental support and administrative support to the Director and Senior Leadership Team. There is real scope for the candidate to shape the role and gain experience from involvement in various organisational projects. This is a fantastic opportunity to join an encouraging, consultative, dedicated and supportive team and be part of the work of an inspirational organisation.
Contract
Permanent 4 days (30 hrs per week). We can be flexible on hours worked each day and the days worked e.g. splitting 30 hours over 5 days.
Salary
£27,007 pro rata (4 days - £21,606). First Give is committed to paying the London Living Wage.
Location
Hybrid, in our North West London office with one day per week at home. We can be flexible regarding the specific days, but these will be fixed once agreed.
Annual leave
4 day a week role = 27 days annual leave (inclusive of 6.5 pro-rated bank holiday days).
Reporting to
Deputy Director
Key responsibilities
Providing support to the First Give team, primarily the SLT
- To be the first point of contact for enquiries to First Give by email and telephone
- Provide administrative support for First Gives Board of Trustees and SLT, including scheduling meetings and meeting minutes
- Supporting with communications to stakeholders e.g. schools, facilitators or funders as needed
- Managing First Gives relationship with external contractors such as printers and Salesforce support
Overseeing and managing financial administration
- Setting up and tracking payments to contractors and charities in our banking system ensuring timely completion
- Processing, reviewing and identifying outstanding invoices (including working closely with school finance departments to ensure timely payment of school contributions)
- Administering expenses and pre-paid card system, ensuring expenses are accurately recorded each month
- Provide regular monthly tracking reports on payments to the Director
Administering First Give’s charity grants
- Carrying out due diligence for winning charities to ensure comply with First Give donation rules
- Liaising with winning charities to arrange payment and ensuring accurate records of payments processed
- Running monthly reports on payments for the Director
Providing support to the Programmes team
- Supporting the Programmes team with recruitment of judges for school finals
- Managing First Give’s programme resources stock, ensuring we have enough programme documents and equipment to resource the programme
- Management of coursebook printing and distribution to schools
The job description gives an outline of key duties and is not intended to be an exhaustive list. The post holder may be asked to take on other relevant responsibilities as reasonably requested by their line manager.
Safer recruitment
Safeguarding is of paramount importance to us, as an organisation that works with and for young people. The successful candidate will be asked to provide 2 references as well as undertake a DBS check.
Person specification
Essential
- Passionate about young people and their potential to drive social change
- Highly organised with excellent time management and task prioritisation skills
- Strong attention to detail
- Highly proactive and someone who naturally uses initiative
- Evidence of ability to work independently – a self-starter – while responding to guidance and feedback
- Excellent and confident verbal and written communicator with internal and external stakeholders
- Confident working in a hybrid setting, with a majority remote-networked team
- Confident using full MS Office suite (MS Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Excel, Word etc.)
- Able to work in our office in West Hampstead 3 days’ a week
Desirable
- Experience of using Salesforce to process data and provide reports (if not, we will provide training)
- Experience of providing administrative support in a similar organisation
Why work for First Give?
First Give provides many benefits and prides itself on how it treats its staff. Our benefits include:
- Three additional days between Christmas and New Year given to staff gratis
- An additional day off for your birthday in addition to your annual leave allowance
- Annual leave allowance increases year on year after 3 years with First Give to a maximum of 30 days (f.t.e)
- Access to Health Assured (health and wellbeing) Employee Assistance Programme
- As you will use your personal mobile for work, First Give provides a phone allowance to contribute towards your mobile costs
- Training and professional development budget, with regular training offered through the Pears Foundation
- Laptops are provided on a ‘paid for through service’ arrangement and become the employees after three years of service
- Multiple team socials and volunteering days throughout the year
The students we impact come from all walks of life, and so do we. We appreciate that our team will only ever be stronger when we’re all different. We consider gender identity, sexual orientation, race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, religious belief, disability and age to be irrelevant to our recruitment and we do not take these factors into account when hiring.
Please get in touch with Victoria Lindop (contact details in attached JD) if you would like to request reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process or have any other questions.
Application process
Please fill out the application form which asks for a full statement of how you fulfil the specification above, and why you want this role at First Give. Please also fill out this equality & diversity monitoring form (this will not be linked to your application).
1. Application closes: Wednesday 16th July 9am
2. Interviews: Friday 25th July
3. Start date: Monday 1st September (or as soon as possible after this date)
Registered Charity
6 - 10
Creating opportunities where young people are inspired and empowered to give their time, money or skills to charities and causes that they care about
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Thank you!
Global Canopy is a data-driven not for profit that targets the market forces destroying nature. We do this by improving transparency and accountability. We provide innovative open-access data, clear metrics, and actionable insights to leading companies, financial institutions, governments and campaigning organisations worldwide.
About the Role
Global Canopy is seeking a motivated and adaptable Research Associate to join our growing NRF team. This role is ideal for someone with a strong research foundation in nature-related finance who is looking to build experience across a range of areas including technical analysis, engagement, and capacity-building.
As a Research Associate, you will work across multiple projects aimed at helping shift global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes toward nature-positive ones. In this role you will:
- contribute to capacity-building initiatives that help financial institutions apply tools like ENCORE in real-world settings
- support the design and delivery of research that underpins practical tools and insights that incentivise market participants to account for nature-related risks (for example, integrating nature into financial products and services, designing transition pathways, improving the understanding and pricing of nature-related risks.)
- translate complex, technical content on nature-related finance into formats that are clear and actionable for non-specialist audiences
An initial core responsibility in this role is to support the delivery of capacity-building activities on the ENCORE tool in Colombia, Indonesia, South Africa, and Peru. This includes working closely with in-country consultants to provide technical and operational support, adapt materials to local contexts, and ensure effective implementation on the ground.
This role will report into the NRF deputy director, and will also involve supporting the NRF deputy director in her role within the ENCORE partnership and associated fundraising activities.
We are looking for someone who is comfortable working across different types of tasks and teams and who enjoys contributing to both technical work and practical engagement.
Furthermore, you will contribute to a culture of kindness, collaboration, rigour and accountability in equal measure. You will come to work with a sense of urgent mission, but one balanced by emotional intelligence. You will share our conviction that it is not just what we do that matters in our working life, but how we do it too.
Responsibilities
This role will report into and support the NRF deputy-director and work across a range of NRF projects, including the ENCORE tool.
- Responsibility for the delivery of the capacity-building components in the SECO-funded ENCORE project
- Supervise consultants/suppliers and/or manage relationships with partners who are collaborating on engagement and capacity building activities that help mainstream the use of nature-related financial tools and frameworks
- Develop and curate training materials for example to assist financial institutions in applying ENCORE
- Work closely with the Education and Learning Team in GC to translate technical content into learning offerings
- Explore and develop engagement partnerships on with various stakeholders such as scientific institutions, other IGOs and NGOs. Manage and contribute to governance of these partnerships
- Work with Global Canopy Communications team to ensure that materials for Global Canopy are aligned with organisational approaches to messaging and tone of voice
- Work with Global Canopy Senior Designer to ensure that visual assets and all materials for Global Canopy align with the organisation’s brand identity as needed
- Responsible for designing, leading and preparation of research focusing on key nature-related finance issues
- Ensure highest quality of research outputs and be part of the research teams
- Lead research partnerships on nature-related financial risks with leading scientific institutions. This will include designing governance structures of the research to include market participants as a tester community, advisory committee, or other most appropriate ways to crowd-in practice and test outputs
- Actively contribute to identification of funding opportunities and models (grants, corporate sponsorships etc.) to finance future research work
- Input into development of Global Canopy’s overall strategy and the NRF specific strategy based on area of research
- Support the NRF deputy director in her role within the ENCORE partnership by coordinating partner engagement across key areas. This will include preparation of materials prior to meetings with partners – for example, preparing materials for the ENCORE governance committee or supporting in
Requirements
To be successful in the role, these are the things that will matter the most:
- Strong interest in making technical information clear, accessible, and actionable for non-specialist audiences
- Experience conducting applied research and producing outputs for decision-making
- Solid understanding of nature-related finance concepts (nature positive, transition planning, and nature-related disclosures)
- A flexible mindset and the ability to adapt to change and adjust strategies and tasks accordingly
- An ability to navigate multi-stakeholder projects with emotional intelligence
Essential behavioural competencies:
- Highly collaborative, organised, and proactive in managing work across multiple projects and partnerships
- Confident engaging with key audiences, including financial institutions, companies, and other market actors, to understand their needs and communicate insights effectively
- Ability to give and receive feedback, with a willingness to reflect and integrate feedback
- Ability to identify opportunities to connect their work with initiatives across the wider organization
- Capacity to learn and upskill independently and integrate new knowledge and skills into day to day work
Skills and experience:
- University degree in finance and/or natural sciences
- A self-starter with an ability to design, manage and conduct complex research projects
- Experience conducting applied research with outputs designed to support real-world decision-making or research that produced analysis used outside a purely academic setting
- Demonstrated ability to translate complex topics into engaging content and practical tools
- Experience developing knowledge products and/or learning materials for non-specialist audiences
- Adept at ensuring the reliability of content through thorough fact-checking, a focus on accuracy, and consistent application of referencing to ensure integrity and credibility of all content
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Desirable:
- Research experience in risk quantification is an advantage
- Familiarity with the nexus between human rights and nature-related issues
- Experience from consulting or from a sustainability department in a company or as an ESG analyst in a financial institution
- Fluency in Spanish, Portuguese or French
Benefits
Salary: £29,000-35,000 full-time equivalent (This role sits within Band E on Global Canopy’s remuneration framework)
Nature of contract: Part-time (0.8 FTE), fixed-term (18 months). We are a flexible employer and welcome candidates wishing to work flexibly.
Base: Our office is in Oxford, with flexible home-working arrangements in place.
Holidays: 36 days (including bank/public holidays) for discretionary use across the annual leave year. Option to purchase up to an additional 5 days or equivalent of one week’s leave.
Pension: Employer pension contribution of 8%.
Healthcare cashback plan: Covering dental fees, eye-care, wellbeing, physiotherapy, chiropody and much more – for you and any children.
Group Life Assurance: Paying a lump sum of 3 times annual salary
Group Income Protection: Paying 75% of annual salary for up to 2 years (for long term sickness).
Employee Assistance Programme: which provides free, confidential advice on personal and legal matters.
Other: Huge range of discounts and cashback deals at gyms, restaurants, holidays, and much more.
At Global Canopy, we value diversity and inclusion. You can read our diversity statement on our website. We encourage applications from all backgrounds and are committed to having a team with a diverse set of skills, experiences and abilities. We are committed to reducing systemic barriers in our recruitment processes.
Global Canopy works on issues of tropical deforestation. We are particularly interested in strengthening our team to include those with a background from forest regions such as Latin America and South East Asia. We welcome applications from people from these regions.
Global Canopy is an inclusive employer and accommodations will be made to allow anyone who requires additional support to apply for this role. Please get in touch with us if you require any additional support.
To find out more, download the recruitment pack.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.