Community Fundraising Manager
Hours: 40
Salary: £30,000 – £36,000 depending on experience
Planned start date: 04/09/2023
About Smart Works
Smart Works is a dynamic, high profile and fast-growing UK charity that dresses and coaches unemployed women for success at their job interview. We empower each woman by giving her the clothes and the confidence she needs to succeed.
After visiting Smart Works, 69% of clients secure a job within a month, gaining financial independence and transforming their lives.
The Smart Works service is delivered in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Newcastle, Reading and Leeds. Over the past ten years, Smart Works has helped over 30,000 women. It is our mission that any woman who needs our service should be able to find her way to a Smart Works centre.
Smart Works is in a pivotal growth phase, with plans to significantly grow our capacity and reach: In April 2022, Smart Works launched a new Three-Year Plan that will see the charity double the number of women helped annually from 5,000 to 10,000 women a year. To achieve this, we will grow our existing centres and open new centres in areas of need including Bristol and Liverpool.
With three London centres, in North, West and South London, we help women from every London Borough and beyond. London also acts as Smart Works HQ and supports local centres across the Group.
Smart Works has been voted Social Action Charity of the Year. More information about who we are can be found on our website.
About the role
The Fundraising & Partnerships team holds relationships with a wide variety of high-profile organisations including Bank of America, Starling Bank, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, AllBright, AJ Bell, Barclays, The Bicester Village Collection (Value Retail), Clearpay, Russell & Bromley, Nobody’s Child, Varley and ALIGNE.
As the charity works to double the number of women it helps, the Fundraising & Partnerships function is building its team further to engage new and existing supporters and raise vital funds in support of our mission.
Reporting to the Head of Events & Community Fundraising, the Community Fundraising Manager will drive the growth and delivery of signature campaigns such as UK-wide Cycle for Smart Works and our growing sporting challenges portfolio. The successful candidate will also shape innovative new and scalable community fundraising initiatives to benefit the Smart Works Group of 11 centres.
Strategically minded and solution focused, the successful individual will build relationships easily and thrive in a target-driven role. Their collaborative style will enable them to work effectively with Smart Works centres and supporters alike, understanding where opportunities lie for growth.
The role will be based in London, at any one of our centres in North London (Islington), West London (Ladbroke Grove) or South London (Croydon). Occasional evening and weekend work is required to lead and support on our community events.
This is a fantastic position for someone interested in developing their career in fundraising. If you are passionate about empowering women and galvanising individuals, organisations and communities to make a difference, we would love to hear from you.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Leading our annual signature corporate challenge, Cycle for Smart Works – managing the project from planning to execution, including participant recruitment and stewardship, enhancing participant experience and increasing incoming opportunity for the Smart Works Group.
- Develop new community engagement offering, Swap for Smart Works, encouraging audiences to use ‘fashion as a force for good’.
- Lead on establishing new community fundraising initiatives Group-wide, with potential to scale year-on-year.
- Manage and scale a growing sporting challenge portfolio, supporting central and local centres on maximising this offering.
- Work directly with Smart Works clients to deliver the Smart Works Network programme, a community for past successful clients to continue their professional and personal development (free of charge). Examples include senior talks at Bank of America, Bobbi Brown masterclasses and VIP-led inspirational talks, such as with Smart Works Ambassadors.
- Ad hoc support for the wider Fundraising & Partnerships team and activities.
Smart Works is a community that shares a passion to empower women to thrive in work and life, determined to meet our aim of helping as many women as we can back into work. The successful candidate will therefore build strong working relationships across this community, with their own immediate staff team as well as other local centres across the UK and in London.
Personal Specification
Essential Criteria
- Experience of charity fundraising, ideally in a community fundraising capacity.
- Demonstrable flair for creative and strategic thinking, with ability to deliver engaging public-facing initiatives or messaging.
- Strong relationship building and stakeholder management skills.
- Effective project management skills, comfortable with managing multiple projects simultaneously.
- Experience of setting, monitoring and achieving budgets and income targets.
- Familiar with managing fundraising initiatives via a fundraising/individual sponsorship platform such as Just Giving, Funraisin, Run for Charity.
- Confident user of Microsoft Office such as PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
Desirable Criteria
- Experience of delivering charitable challenge/sponsored events or campaigns.
- Experience and/or understanding of volunteer-led and peer-to-peer fundraising.
- Understanding of impactful marketing and promotion.
- Proven ability to secure value-adding partnerships, strong influencing and negotiation skills.
How to Apply
Please submit a CV and cover letter via our recruitment portal by Monday 28th August 2023. Your application should be addressed to Ella Dodd. First round interviews will be held between 11-15th September 2023.
If you require any reasonable adjustments or alterations for the application and recruitment processes, please contact recruitment@smartworks.org.uk about submitting a manual application.
We particularly welcome applications from black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates, disabled candidates, and candidates with lived experience of unemployment as we would like to increase the representation of these groups at Smart Works.
Smart Works promotes equity, diversity, and inclusion in our workplace. We make employment decisions by matching the Charity’s needs with the skills and experience of candidates. These decisions are made irrespective of age, disability (including hidden disabilities), gender, gender identity or gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation.
How to apply
Apply for this opportunity using the web link below
Application deadline: 28/08/2023
Web link: https://smartworks.org.uk/about-us/careers/
Email address: recruitment@smartworks.org.uk
More about Smart Works
Smart Works is a UK charity that provides high quality interview clothes and interview training to unemployed women in need. We harness the power of clothes and confidence to allow a woman to be her best at a crucial moment in her life, giving her the confidence, the self-belief and the practical tools required to succeed at interview and transform her life.