Retail marketing manager jobs in lichfield, staffordshire

**Please note: Hybrid (1dpw, flexible) with regular hospice presence (Birmingham)**

Supporting over 750 children and nearly 1,000 families annually, Acorns Children’s Hospice is a vital lifeline for families across the West Midlands and Gloucestershire during unimaginably difficult times.

Palliative care for children aged 0–18 is delivered at Acorns’ hospices in Birmingham (serving Birmingham and Warwickshire), Worcester (serving Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire), and Walsall (serving the Black Country and parts of Staffordshire and Shropshire), as well as in family homes and other community settings. Acorns’ holistic, tailored approach is designed to meet each child’s clinical, emotional, cultural, religious, and spiritual needs.

Acorns’ Corporate Partnerships team is at a pivotal moment, with a growing income stream and a bold vision to hit £1M within two years. This brand-new role is a game-changing investment in new business. With a huge untapped market across the West Midlands and Gloucestershire, the potential for high-value corporate support is significant – and we’re looking for someone to help Acorns unlock it.

As Acorns’ first dedicated new business specialist, you’ll shape how they identify, approach, and secure high-value partnerships worth £40–50K+. You’ll be part of a supportive team and work closely with your line manager, the Senior Corporate Partnerships Manager – a detail-oriented and flexible leader who values autonomy, innovation, and progression. 

If you thrive on making things happen, enjoy research and relationship-building, and want to make a big difference quickly, this is the role for you. We’re looking for a proactive, confident fundraiser with a strong conversion rate and the energy to lead Acorns’ new business push.

As Corporate Business Development Manager, you will:

• Build and manage a pipeline of strategic new business opportunities across the West Midlands and Gloucestershire, focused on Birmingham/Black Country
• Lead on pitching, negotiating, and securing high-value partnerships (typically £40–50K+)
• Deliver tailored proposals and presentations backed by strong insight and storytelling
• Proactively network and represent Acorns in business communities, identifying where and how to bring in senior stakeholders
• Collaborate with the wider Partnerships team to ensure seamless handovers and outstanding stewardship from day one
• Monitor conversion rates and provide accurate forecasting and reporting
• Secure sponsorship for flagship and third-party events and support stock generation partnerships with retail​

Ideal skills and experience:

• Proven success in securing significant new business income in a charity fundraising team
• Strong prospect research, networking, and pipeline management skills
• Confident and credible communicator, comfortable with C-suite stakeholders and public speaking
• Creative thinker with commercial awareness and a solutions-focused approach
• Driven, self-starting attitude with the ability to work autonomously toward targets
• Flexible, agile, and happy to attend events and meetings across a wide region (with Birmingham/Black Country as a key focus)
• Passionate about Acorns’ mission and excited to help shape the future of our corporate income

Employee benefits

• 27 days annual leave plus bank holidays (From April 2026: 5 day holiday buyback scheme) 
• 7.5% employer pension contribution
• Life assurance scheme (2 x annual salary)
• Retail discounts (including the Blue Light card)
• Cycle to work scheme
• Discounted gym membership
• Access to expert financial health and wellbeing support

You don’t need to tick every box; if you care about making a difference, we want to hear from you.

We’re looking for two Place Leads to help drive our work in Stoke-on-Trent and East Staffordshire. Each role will be rooted in its local area, but both will work across the whole county, helping us build more connected, inclusive systems that support people to be active in ways that matter to them.

This work is part of a wider investment from Sport England, focused on changing how systems support people to be active. That means shaping how physical activity is understood, prioritised, and embedded, not just in programmes, but in policies, partnerships, and everyday decisions. That includes health, local government, community development, and beyond.

You’ll work with partners, communities, and decision-makers to make sense of what’s already happening, spot where things are stuck, and help shift both the culture and the practice. The work will be messy, layered, and relational. Some days will be about strategy. Others will be about trust.

You’ll be part of a small, committed team working across policy, systems, community insight and practice. And you’ll be trusted to bring your own judgement, experience, and clarity to the role.

If you’re someone who can see the potential in people and systems, even when they’re tired or fragmented, we’d love to hear from you.

Role Outcomes:

• Improve wellbeing outcomes for families as part of place expansion work
• Connected, vibrant, proactive system of partners working in core priority places
• Grassroots, community organisations in our priority places are part of decision making
• Robust learning and evaluation framework in place the can effectively demonstrate the our impact across systems and directly for people living in place
• The people who need to understand and demonstrate system leadership do
• Coordinated, coherent approach has been developed to place based working in areas of focus.

What does this mean day to day?

• You’ll spend time listening to what’s emerging in communities, building trust with partners, and making sense of how insight, decisions, and action travel across the system.
• You’ll support our governance groups, coordinating agendas, shaping recommendations, and helping hold people gently but clearly to account for the things they’ve committed to.
• You’ll track where energy is building, where its leaking, and where attention needs to shift. That means spotting patterns, asking difficult questions, and making sure conversations lead to decisions, and decisions lead to change.
• You’ll need to hold contradictions without forcing resolution: where different truths exist at once, where progress creates new tensions, and where outcomes are unclear. Critical thinking is key; this role is as much about reflection and challenge as it is about delivery.
• Some days you’ll be co-designing a development session. Other days, you’ll be reflecting on what’s working, what’s drifting, and how we bring things back into focus. You’ll be supported by a small team who care about doing this work well, with clarity, kindness, and a shared sense of purpose.

How do we value you?

• Generous annual leave allowance: 27.5 days upon commencement of employment plus bank holidays. This rises by an additional 1 day of leave per year after 2 years of continuous employment, up to an additional 5 days leave in total. (Pro rata for part time staff)
• Three concessionary days leave over Christmas and New Year (pro rata for part time staff)
• Death in service scheme up to the value of three times actual salary
• Volunteer day to spend either as a team or individual helping out with an organisation or cause you select
• Up to 8% employer contribution to pension scheme
• Reimbursement of the cost of a standard eye test as a user of visual display equipment
• Health & Wellbeing Cashplan – including access to a virtual GP any day anytime, Discounts to gym memberships, Retail discounts such as cinema tickets and your weekly shop.
• Access to Cyclescheme
• Annual CPD courses offered by Staffordshire University
• Online skills training platform – for employees to use to broaden their professional and personal development across a range of online courses.
• Access to counselling service.

To apply, please visit our website, read our recruitment pack, and send us your CV along with a cover letter answering the three questions below.

We’re recruiting on a rolling basis. If your application feels like a good fit, we’ll be in touch within a week to arrange an interview.

Questions to answer:

• What draws you to place-based systems work, and what helps you stay with it when it gets messy or slow?
  We’re interested in your motivation, but also in your mindset; how you approach complexity, pace, and change that doesn’t always follow a plan.

• Tell us about a time you helped hold people or partners to account in a way that built trust rather than eroded it.
  This could be from work, volunteering, or anywhere you’ve had to navigate power, tension, or different agendas with care.

• How do you recognise when systems change is happening, and when it isn’t?
  We don’t need a textbook answer. We want to hear how you spot movement (or drift), and what you pay attention to when trying to shift something deeper than outputs.

Welcome

Thank you for your interest in joining the CoachBright team as our new Programme Manager. We are a social mobility charity on a mission to support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds become confident, independent, and resilient, so they can lead the lives they want.

There is an attainment and outcomes gap in the UK between disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier peers. This is exacerbated when pupils have lower confidence in their own abilities and potential. Upward social mobility is made even harder when pupils lack relatable role models. We want to change this!

Now, more than ever, it is essential that young people from disadvantaged back- grounds get the support they need to achieve their goals. That’s why we’re playing our part to narrow the gap and support a generation of pupils to be their best.

We are ambitious, and are looking for someone as passionate as we are about creating a socially just world. If you’re motivated by improving social mobility and transforming the life chances of young people we would love to hear from you.

Many thanks,

Who we are

Vision: a world in which every young person’s destination is based on their choice, ambitions and talents, rather than their background.

Mission: coaching young people to be confident, independent and resilient so they can lead the lives they want.

What we do: we partner with schools, universities and businesses to run face-to-face and virtual coaching programmes for disadvantaged young people with relatable role models who are just a few years ahead in their life journey, we help raise their confidence, independence, resiliance and attainment. Our coahes are typically undergraduate volunteers or senior pupils in schools who we train and support to become effective coaches. 

The Challenge

By the age of 5, 43% of disadvantaged young people have not reached a good level of literacy and numeracy.

57% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds leave primary schools without reaching the expected standard in reading and maths.

A disadvantaged child is 50% less likely to achieve passes in GCSE English and Maths.

Only 16% of Free School Meal eligible young people attend university, compared to more than 75% of those who attend an independent school.

1 in 3 young people frpm disadvantaged backgrounds are not in any form of sustained education, apprenticship or employment five years after their GCSEs.

1 in 5 undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds don't complete their degree, double the rate for the most advantaged.

Those in elite occupations from disadvantaged backgrounds earn £6,400 per year less in the same role, and take 25% longer to gain a promotion.

Our Impact

We have been delivering coaching programmes across England since 2014, supporting over 15,000 young people in that time. We have a small but growing number of programmes directly coaching undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds (our Lifecycle programme). However, the majority of our work and impact takes place in schools, involving us training undergraduates (our Core programme) or senior pupils (our Peer to Peer programme) to be coaches to younger pupils.

We are proud that our programmes demonstrate consistently strong impact on the outcomes most closely associated with improving social mobility: attainment, social & emotional development, and school attendance.

Our most recent independent evaluation found:

Increases in maths (11.1%) and English (5.1%) attainment.

Significant improvements (min 8%) in metacognition, self-efficacy, and motivation.

Persistently absent pupils’ school attendance increased by 11%!

Our Values

We have four core values at CoachBright that we use to guide us and help our decision making. These values remind us at all times who we help, how we help them, and how we should act as both a charity and as individuals.

1. We understand the complexities of disadvantage. We prioritise supporting young people from low-income households but understand that disadvantage is context-dependent and that the drivers of disadvantage regularly shift.

2. We believe coaching is transformative. All of our work, from primaryphase programmes to our Lifecycle work with young adults, is grounded in a belief that high-quality coaching can transform a young persons life.

3. We strive for clarity. We are open and honest with our beneficiaries, our partners, and each other. We hold each other to high standards and provide transparency and clarity with the deisions and work we do.

4. We are a team not just colleagues. We are committed to helping others, and this commitment extends beyond our beneficiaries to each other in the workplace. We strive to make CoachBright a place where regardless of role, level of seniority, or length of time at the organisation, we all want to roll our sleeves up to support each other and share in each other's successes and challenges.

Our Team

We are a small but mighty team, with a mixture of experiences including youth work, teaching, music, finance, social work and many others. Although our backgrounds and skills may be different, what we have in common is a commitment to our core values, and a belief that our work can - and does - change young people’s lives.

And whilst we may be located in different parts of the country, we work extremely hard to ensure we live up to our fourth core value - ‘we are a team, not just colleagues’.

I've never worked in such a wonderful team before. It's been great to join such a supportive environment where everyone just wants the very best for each other and are all so passionate about our shared mission.

Role description

In the 25/26 academic year, we will be expanding our work significantly, supporting close to 3,000 young people from Cornwall to Northumberland. The majority of this growth will be through a one-year project we are running in partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation.

This project is a randomised control trial (RCT) of our Peer to Peer coaching programme, where we will be working with an additional 50 new secondary schools. We have seen consistently strong impact from this programme on the attainment, social & emotional development, and school attendance of disadvantaged young people for many years. This EEF supported RCT now gives us the opportunity to test this impact at significant scale, specifically on the maths attainment, maths self-efficacy, and school attendance of disadvantaged Y10 and Y7 pupils (see here for more details). 

To support with this delivery, we are looking to recruit additional fixed-term (October 2025 - July 2026) Programme Managers, both full and part time, in the following regions:

1. South West (including Cornwall and Plymouth) Part time, 2-3 days per week

2. South East England (including Greater London, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, and Milton Keynes) Full time

3. North West (including Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire) Part time, 3-4 days per week

4. North East (including Northumberland, Newcastle, Tyneside and Teesside) Part time, 2-3 days per week

You will have end-to-end ownership of your own allocation of programmes, which may involve a mixture of Peer to Peer, Core and Lifecycle programmes. Whilst delivering our programmes you will be required to build excellent relationships with our school and university partners, support with training and developing our undergraduate volunteers, use our evaluation frameworks to assess impact, and lead on conversations related to retention and expansion.

Candidates should be able to cover all locations in the given region they are applying for, so access to a car would be an advantage, but is not essential. At times team members may be asked to travel to a location outside of their region, but this will be rare and sufficient notice and TOIL will be given where appropriate.

All roles are on fixed term contracts starting Monday 6th October 2025 and finishing 31st July 2026. The majority of direct delivery in schools will begin early November. The first few weeks in the role will combine a mixture of induction, training, programme observations, programme set up, and volunteer recruitment for our Core programmes.

Whilst there is the potential for a permanent role beyond the length of this project, this will be based on our levels of school retention and business development, and so cannot be guaranteed. 

You will flourish in this role if you have a genuine passion and ‘knack’ for working with young people and supporting them to succeed, as well as being organised, motivated, and able to think on your feet quickly. If that sounds like you, please get in touch!

Role details

Managing and delivering programmes

• Coordinate and run multiple in-school and online programmes, typically requiring travel to schools most working days.

• Set timelines for programme start and finish dates. 

• Oversee programme quality and communicate with school staff weekly to provide feedback after sessions. 

• Facilitate in-school or digital workshops for groups of pupils (KS1-5). 

• Plan and organise graduation trips to a local university for pupils on the programme.

• Collect data for monitoring and evaluation purposes, such as pre and post programme questionnaires, attendance records, and pupil and coach feedback.

• Report regularly to the Programmes Team Leader on key performance indicators and programme updates.

• Build and maintain high quality relationships with pupils, schools, and universities..

• Collect data and write impact reports and case studies for each programme.

Recruiting and managing undergraduate volunteers (in regions with Core programmes):

• Recruit and retain volunteer undergraduate coaches.

• Coordinate and allocate undergraduate coaches to Core school programmes, communicating with them weekly and when needed arranging transport for them to schools.

• Deliver training to volunteers both in-person and online. 

• Develop and maintain relationships with universities, particularly access, outreach, and widening participation teams.

Expanding our reach and impact:

• Ensure retention of schools and universities within the region by delivering high quality programmes, and leading retention, renewal, and expansion conversations with partners.

• Support the growth of our network of schools, Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), Local Education Authorities, and universities in your region.

• Contribute to programme design, take part in a working group and whole team meetings.

• Gather and create content for social media and marketing materials. 

• Running pupil and school leader focus groups.

• Carry out other tasks that are within the scope and spirit of the role.

Person Specification

Essential characteristics and experience

Below are the key attributes candidates will need to be confident of demonstrating.

• Passion for social mobility. We have big aims and are looking for those who share our desire to make education fairer in the UK.

• Ability to think on your feet. Delivering programmes with young people can be unpredictable, so you will need to be comfortable working reactively to solve challenges at short notice.

• Programme or project management experience. In particular the ability to be organised, plan ahead, and manage competing priorities and timelines.

• Experience with young people. Comfortable running a session or delivering a workshop with a group of young people from age 8-18. (Please note, the vast majority of our programmes are at secondary phase).

• Relationship building and facilitating. This is a public-facing role so you will be involved in communicating and delivering workshops to groups as well as communicating our mission to a wide range of stakeholders (business leaders, senior members of MATs, universities etc.).

• Excellent communication skills, particularly public speaking. You should be comfortable talking to groups of 5 or 500.

• Ability to make quick and clear decisions.

Desired characteristics and experience

Below are attributes that would be useful in the role. However candidates that have less experience in these areas should not be discouraged from applying.

• Understanding of the specific barriers to social mobility, both nationally and regionally, and the context for the young people we work with. 

• Experience of sales or partnership management/development, particularly with schools or universities.

• Experience of working in education settings.

• Existing network of relevant sector contacts in schools and/or universities, or demonstrable ability to quickly establish new connections independently.

Key details

Benefits

• An opportunity to contribute to an exciting charity with scope to input widely and take on new responsibilities.

• 28 annual leave days (pro rata).

• Fridays off during non-term-time (pro rata).

• Access to a £100 individual annual CPD budget in addition to CoachBright’s standard training offer which includes safeguarding, health and safety and diversity, equity and inclusion training).

• Access to a 24-hour employee assisted helpline facilitated independently by Health Assured.

• Access to BrightHR perks, including a range of retail discounts. 

Key Information:

• Annual salary of  £30,579 - plus £2,500 London weighting where applicable (pro rata)

• Fixed term contract (6th October 2025  - 31st July 2026).

• Remote role with travel to schools across England. The majority of working days will require a trip to 1-2 schools in your region.

• Reporting to our Programmes Team Leader

Who we're looking for

Brilliant storyteller with confidence in their digital marketing, copywriting and PR skills. 

Changemaker who is excited about embedding and championing our new brand. 

Motivated communicator who will improve engagement with our stakeholders. 

Creative leader who enjoys a proactive and responsive environment. 

Impact and evidence champion to influence target audiences, raise awareness and garner support. 

Values-led collaborator who will build strong relationships with our team, members and strategic partners.

Our focus is on creating libraries of tomorrow with children and young people today.

We want all children and young people to feel at home at the library, to be understood, empowered and inspired. Our collaborative network is made up of member, partners and supporters. We believe in the need for safe spaces and real-life connections to support the demands of modern life. Together, we’re creating change, and you can be a part of it.

Our charity is going through a rebirth, with a new name, strategy and brand identity launching this autumn. This is a pivotal time for a passionate, skilled communicator to join our team. We’re looking for someone to bring the energy and expertise to take us into this new chapter and to new heights, maximising impact and reach. 

We are an Arts Council England Investment Principles Support Organisation. Our members are leaders in children and young people’s public libraries and schools library services (SLS). 

What’s important to us needs to be important to you too. We want to focus on impact, to work openly, to collaborate with and learn from others, to take the time to care for ourselves and each other, and to have fun together. We want to build an environmentally sustainable charity, and we want to be celebrated as an inclusion changemaker in the sector. 

Experience as a communications professional is essential and you’ll be energised by the opportunity to: 

• Raise our profile higher within the sector. 

• Raise awareness of the range of activities and impacts libraries deliver for children and young people through research, evidence and compelling communication. 

• Develop, manage and deliver targeted advocacy for public libraries and schools library services. 

• Maintain and cultivate proactive relationships with advocacy and influencing partners to ensure children and young people are always represented in national policy discussions. 

• Embed and champion a strong brand, which supports our members and resonates with new stakeholders to ensure we are the ‘go to partner’ for children and young people’s libraries. 

• Maximise our use of existing and new research and data to evidence the impact of library services for children and young people’s and schools library services. 

• Promote the sector-leading work of our charity, grow our membership and develop new and innovative ways to increase our reach and engagement. 

• Develop a strong case for support to attract new funders and supporters. 

We are committed to providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process and we’ll endeavour to be as accommodating as possible. If you would like to discuss specific requirements, please get in touch.

Further information including the role description and application form is available on our website.