Associate Director (Communications and Engagement)

The Associate Director, Communications and Engagement will lead Young Lives vs Cancer’s brand, marketing and communications strategy to ensure we can reach the children and young people with cancer who need us, raise vital money to fund our services and make real change in the system; through creative, emotive and effective storytelling.

Associate Director Requirements:

You will have substantial experience of delivering strategy through a multi-disciplinary Communications and Engagement function, incorporating brand, marketing communications, media and engagement. You will bring experience of developing brands and campaigns that are relevant, visible and effective, with a real understanding about the power of speaking with one voice through targeted content and channels that maximise engagement opportunities.

About Us:

When a child is diagnosed with cancer life becomes full of fear, for them and their family. Fear of treatment, but also of families being torn apart, overwhelming money worries, of having nowhere to turn, no one to talk to.

At Young Lives vs Cancer, we help families find the strength to face whatever cancer throws at them. And you could be a part of the team making it happen.

What we offer:

In return for your commitment, we offer a great reward package, which includes generous annual leave entitlement, pension scheme and season ticket loan.

We are always looking for talented people from all backgrounds, to join us and help improve the lives of children and young people with cancer and their families. We particularly want to encourage people from under-represented groups to step forward and apply to work or volunteer with Young Lives vs Cancer.

Young Lives vs Cancer is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff to share this commitment. This post is subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service check.

Location: Flexible
Contract Type: Temporary - 12 months (Maternity Cover)
Hours: Full Time, 35 per week
Salary: £65,000 per annum

Closing Date: 8 December 2021

You may have experience of the following: Associate Director, Head of Communications, Communications Manager, Internal Engagement, Copy Writer, Charity, Charities, Third Sector, Internal Communications Manager, Employee Engagement, PR, Public Relations, Corporate Communications, etc.

Ref: 104 838

About us

Child. org is an international non-governmental organisation led from Nairobi with a mission to spark progress in global child health. We design, discover and deliver innovative solutions to keep babies and children safe and healthy. Our income team, based in/around Bristol in the UK, brings together fundraising and enterprise streams to raise vital funds to support our project work in Kenya, as well as leading our digital communications and supporter stewardship. 

Everything we do, we try to do with an eye to being smart and savvy about it. Whether it’s our programming, our fundraising or our communications with supporters, partners and stakeholders. As a small, growing organisation, you’ll play a key role in shaping our future communications strategy and developing core fundraising projects, bringing dynamism and creativity to an ambitious and growing charity.

The Opportunity

You’ll join us at a transformative time. We’ve been shifting our programming strategy to a place where we invest in new, innovative approaches to global child health challenges that we are testing and piloting, in order to identify where scaling our activity could have the best impact; now, we want to share this with our supporters and partners. We’re looking for a passionate storyteller who understands the key issues underpinning international development, a digital native who can translate the work we are doing to our wider supporters across newsletters, social media and our website. 

You’ll also be closely involved in our flagship fundraising activities: from our award-winning Ride Africa cycle challenge to our festival partnerships with Charity Concierge, you’ll get stuck in with the team to ensure we continue to deliver exceptional experiences across these events.  This is a new position, bringing with it the opportunity to shape the role as it develops. 

The Role

Communications and fundraising are uniquely intertwined, particularly as digital fundraising grows in importance as an income stream. You get this, and want to work on both. As the Communications and Fundraising Officer you’ll help set the strategy for content across all communications platforms and help us grow the profile of our work and our brand. You’ll be the first port of call for supporter care and engagement, and a core team member across our flagship fundraising events. You’ll take the lead on some of our enterprise activities and manage the recruitment and mentoring of volunteers/participants for both Ride Africa and Charity Concierge. 

Key objectives

• Design and deliver key content across all platforms to support income generation and grow our profile
• With the Income Manager, develop the communications strategy to increase reach, engagement and income
• With the Income Manager, support on the redesign of the website
• Provide key strategic support for flagship fundraising activities through participant recruitment (digital marketing) and mentoring (stewardship)
• Improve regular supporter engagement and care through exceptional stewardship 

Key Responsibilities: 

Digital Communications

• Copy-writing, asset creation and content development for social media, website and newsletters as well as more formal reporting

• Manage and maintain our main website, and our product websites (Ride Africa, Charity Concierge)
• Development of digital fundraising strategies, working closely with the Income Manager to create engaging content and messaging with clear calls to action
• Monitor and evaluate the reach and engagement of our digital communications

Stewardship and fundraising activities

• Devise and develop supporter cultivation and acquisition: improving the donor journey for one-off and regular giving to increase donor retention and improve overall supporter experience.
• Deliver high standards of supporter care, including responding to general correspondence and queries
• Manage ongoing enterprise products including Big Fat Christmas and Shopify
• Lead on recruitment for flagship fundraising activities: Charity Concierge and Ride Africa, and manage ongoing fundraising support. 
• Fundraising administration, reconciliation and reporting

Person Specification
 
Experience

• Demonstrable experience leading digital communications - newsletters, social media and web page copy-writing, content planning and developing creative assets. 
• A solid understanding and working knowledge of CRM and CMS systems (CiviCRM, Drupal, Wordpress, Squarespace)
• An understanding of international development, either through work, volunteering or academic interest. 
• Experience of working or volunteering in the third sector
• Demonstrable networking and stewardship experience and the ability to build relationships with key stakeholders

Skills

• Outstanding communication skills, with the ability to adapt messaging to different audiences
• Digital skills: working knowledge of G-suite (docs, drive and sheet); CRM and CMS systems; competency with publishing software (InDesign/Lucidpress)
• Excellent interpersonal skills with experience of building and managing relationships with donors and supporters of an organisation
• Excellent organisational and planning skills, project management skills a bonus
• A keen attention to detail, with the ability to work across teams, internally and externally, to drive fundraising engagement and coordination

Qualifications

• A strong academic record, ideally to degree level or equivalent, in subjects demanding strong written English
• A Fundraising Diploma or professional qualification is advantageous but will not outweigh experience

At Child. org we welcome and value difference, determination and open communication. We want to build our team to represent a variety of experiences, perspectives and skills who, ultimately, are united by a passion to make an impact and spark progress in global health. We do things with a sharpness and a deep understanding of how to provide value to everyone involved. You’ll need to bring that kind of value with you. You need to be walking in the door excited about the opportunities you can open up for us. If making your mark on this sector is important to you, if you’re ready to be part of real change, then get in touch.

The role will initially be remote (home-working) with a view to hybrid working at a shared desk-space 1-2 days/week in the New Year. 

Full-time: 40 hours per week (Part-time may be considered for the right candidate). Permanent.

The deadline for applications is 3 December at 12 noon.

Unseen is working towards a world without slavery. We provide safe houses and support in the community for survivors of human trafficking and modern slavery. We also run the UK’s Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline and work with individuals, communities, businesses, governments, other charities, and statutory agencies to stamp out modern slavery for good.

We are looking for a full-time experienced Director to join Unseen’s Senior Leadership Team to oversee our fundraising, communications, and operations activities. We are looking for an experienced leader with a record of accomplishment of working strategically, including experience of liaising at Board level.  This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated strategic thinker to join a fast-paced and ambitious organisation at a time of growth and re-organisation. 

As a strong and inspirational leader, you will be responsible for setting the vision and direction for your various teams. You will lead multi-disciplinary fundraising, communications, and operations teams, including administrative, and HR functions for the organisation. Your drive and determination will be core in helping the organisation achieve its income generation targets as well as optimising cross-organisational operational frameworks and processes. Using your significant communications experience you will ensure all of Unseen’s internal and external communications channels and networks are maximised and utilised appropriately to meet the organisation’s goals.  Your leadership style will ensure you strive to get the best out of your teams, and you will have a passion for personal growth and learning as well as a track record in developing others to succeed. 

Evidence of working collaboratively with colleagues to deliver challenging and ambitious projects, to time, is essential. The successful candidate will be passionate about Unseen’s work and able to articulate its values with confidence and professionalism to stakeholders, partners, and funders. Full and ongoing training and supervision are provided. 

The successful applicant must be able to travel to Unseen’s Head Office in Bristol regularly.

We are looking for someone to start in the first quarter of 2022 (subject to satisfactory references and completion of induction).

Please refer to the job pack for more details.

Successful applicants will be invited to a first interview in December. Second interviews may be held in December/early January.

To apply, please submit a personal statement (of no more than 3000 words) setting out why you think you are suitable for the role and specifically answering the following three questions.  

1. What experiences, skills, qualities and values would you draw on in the role of Director of Fundraising, Communications and Operations? (500 words max)
2. Describe a positive strategic development you have taken forward, outlining your contributions to this success and lessons learnt. (max 500 words)
3. Unseen works with many strategic partners, can you describe where you have used your experience to influence key partners? (max 500 words)

To make our recruitment process as fair as possible and to reduce bias we will be shortlisting based on your response to these three questions using ‘blinding’ and ‘chunking’ processes, so please make sure that each of your responses to the questions above stand on their own merits and do not rely on information from any other responses you give.

We also ask for your CV, but will only use this to provide context if you are invited to interview, it will not be used in shortlisting.

The equal opportunities form can be downloaded from the links at the bottom of the page. Once completed please return all forms to the email address provided.

Unseen is an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from all sections of the community we serve and recognise the value that diversity adds to our work and organisation. We encourage applications from BAME, disabled and LGBT people that are under-represented in our workforce, as well as people with lived experience of modern slavery and human trafficking.

A rare opportunity to devote your research and programme management expertise to one of the key challenges in the UK energy system: how to ensure that no one is left behind in the transition to net zero.

This new senior role will help develop the capabilities and performance of our Research & Analysis Team and take the lead on our ground-breaking Smart and Fair? programme.

This is a new role at CSE. Its creation has been stimulated by the impending departure of one of our senior researchers alongside a recognition of the need to adopt a more programmatic approach to our research work. It also reflects a shift in how the Research and Analysis team is led and managed. The Head of Research Programmes is one of three senior roles in the team (alongside the Head of Research Operations and the Director of Research and Analysis) that will jointly play a significant role in oversight of the team’s work and performance and in the future development of the team’s capabilities and activities. The role will work across the Research and Analysis team but with a particular focus on leading our Smart and Fair? programme. This is a ground-breaking initiative addressing how to ensure that no one is left behind in the transition to a smarter net zero energy system. Initiated by CSE in June 2019 and involving extensive engagement with expert stakeholders, we reported on the findings and recommendations from its first phase in October 2020. In developing Phase 2, what was effectively a single research project has developed into a more significant programme of work, consisting several different projects for which funding has been secured and a number of identified initiatives for which funding is being actively sought. 

We particularly welcome applications from the Black, Asian and minority ethnic and disabled communities, as they are under-represented at CSE. Appointment will always, however, be made on merit and judged against the job description and person specification. And we are pleased to be signed up to the Disability Confident scheme.

Oasis Community Partnerships is looking for someone who can combine an entrepreneurial flair and excellent leadership skills to become the new Community Hub Leader supporting the established Hub at North Bristol. 

The post holder will lead the development of the Hub based in the Lawrence Weston area of Bristol supporting the Academies and wider local community, and to hold the vision of integrated community delivery, which will include a range of services such as family support, holiday provision, volunteering, Youth mentoring, employability and NEET prevention. We are looking for an experienced Community Hub Leader who will take the Hub Charity to the next stage of development and grow the local community movement through our Christ-centred ethos. Some of the specific duties of this role include:

• planning, resource and coordinate the community Hub plan, measuring impact.
• building supportive working partnerships across the community and various groups.
• leading Hub strategic development (e.g. comms, income generation, MEL)
• developing a team that can grow an Oasis Movement (e.g. engaging staff, volunteers and community workers).

This is very much a relational and project management role.  As such, the successful applicant will need to demonstrate:

• experience of leading community delivery and growing projects from start-up phase.
• innovative use of resources and budget management to maximise funding.
• a thorough knowledge and understanding community work and its’ potential for raising standards.
• an education to degree level or equivalent and /or relevant professional qualification

This is a unique opportunity for a self-reliant and results-focused individual, who is looking to make a difference in this complex and high profile field of work.  In return we offer:

• Flexible working practices which encourages innovation and fresh ideas.
• A supportive network and friendly team in a motivating working environment.
• A non-contributory defined benefit pension scheme with 7% employer contributions.
• 25 days holiday per year (plus Bank Holidays), rising to 30 days after 2 years of service.

For full details please go the Oasis UK charity website or download the documents on this page. 

This will be a rolling recruitment campaign so we invite you to send in your CV and Covering Letter early to the Oasis UK charity Recruitment Team.  CVs will not be accepted after Midday, Monday 6th December 2021.  Final interviews will be held week beginning 13th December 2021, in Bristol.

We actively encourage applications from people of all ethnic backgrounds and minority and underrepresented groups.  Oasis is committed to making a difference to the lives of the communities it works in, and as such you must show a willingness to demonstrate commitment to the values and behaviours which flow from the Oasis ethos.  We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. We expect all staff to share this commitment and to undergo appropriate checks, including enhanced DBS checks.  The successful candidate will need to show proof of right to work in the UK.  Oasis supports Equal Opportunities.  Registered Charity No. 1163889