Events Manager
Hours: 40
Salary: £28,000 – £34,000 FTE 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, Telegraph Fashion, The Bicester Village Collection (Value Retail), Covent Garden, Somerset House, 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 Events Manager will play an integral role in delivering an exciting portfolio of fundraising and retail events across the year, including Smart Works Pop-Up Shops, Fashion Sales and Fashion Club events.
The successful individual will have good relationship-building skills to ensure lasting and mutually beneficial event partnerships, experience in stakeholder management (both internally and externally) and demonstrable knowledge of best-in-class event delivery.
The role will be based primarily at our Smart Works North London centre (HQ), in Islington. Occasional evening and weekend work is required to lead and support on our external events.
This is a fantastic opportunity for someone looking to develop their career in high-value fundraising events. If you are passionate about supporting women, delivering innovative event experiences and shaping impactful partnerships, we would love to hear from you.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Leading on Smart Works Fashion Sales, managing the project from planning to execution and ensuring income targets are met.
- Assist on delivering and growing our pop-up shop model, working closely with the Head of Events & Community Fundraising to deliver multiple shops annually.
- Effectively steward and manage multiple fashion retail and events partners to increase annual gift-in-kind support and engagement.
- Lead on The Fashion Club – our high-value membership programme – delivering quarterly VIP-led events and growing membership numbers.
- Building strong working relationships across the Smart Works community, collaborating effectively to ensure impactful results.
- Ad hoc support for the wider Partnerships team and other 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
- Demonstrable experience of event management and delivery, ideally in a fundraising or luxury/high-value capacity.
- Strong relationship-building skills and confidence managing various stakeholders.
- Proven ability to develop value-adding partnerships.
- Able to identify and implement new ideas or ways of working.
- Effective project management skills, comfortable with managing multiple projects simultaneously.
- Ability to multi-task and work to time-sensitive deadlines.
- Experience of setting, monitoring and achieving budgets and income targets.
Desirable Criteria
- Interest in fashion and clothing retail.
- Experience in a fundraising or sales-based role.
- Experience working with VIPs or influencers.
- Confident user of Microsoft Office including PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
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.