Funding Manager

Our client is a leading independent funder.

They aim to improve our natural world, secure a fairer future and strengthen the bonds in communities in the UK.

The foundation provides c. £50million annually in grants to organisations working in the arts, children and young people, sustainable food and environment, and social change. They also have an allocation of £60 million for social investment to support organisations creating social impact.

Their strategy focuses on three interdependent aims: improving Our Natural World; tackling injustice to deliver A Fairer Future; and nurturing Creative, Confident Communities. They provide long-term, flexible grants as well strategic support to organisations and initiatives with brilliant ideas that work towards these aims.

Prospectus is delighted to be helping to recruit a Funding Manager on a full-time (or 0.8) permanent basis to work on the A Fairer Future (AFF) programme as part of the team based in Kings Cross.

In A Fairer Future, there are five focus areas:

• Arts and creativity making change
• Children and young people's rights
• Gender justice
• Migrant justice
• Racial justice

The role:
This key role will add substantial grant-making and strategic capacity to the AFF team, which currently consists of 6 people reporting to the Director of A Fairer Future. The role will take on existing relationships in the form of a portfolio of organisations at various points in their funding journey. This person will pick up these relationships and ensure continuity as well as contributing to strategic initiatives, helping to achieve impact in the thematic areas covered by the AFF strategy and roadmaps. Committed to social justice, the candidate will be ambitious to help create change using the foundation's full range of tools and approaches.

Convening collaborations, commissioning research and mobilising networks to create change will all be part of this role in addition to the more day to day management of organisation's funding journey, supporting them from application onwards to achieve the best possible impact. They will also be responsible for capturing learning from reporting, site visits and facilitating online discussions with organsiations as well as representing the Foundation at sector forums and events concentrating on the AFF priority areas.

The culture at the foundation is collaborative and nurturing, so working closely with colleagues to share ideas and learn from each other will be essential in this role.

The person:
The successful candidate will have experience of working in one or more of the areas cover by the AFF priorities, perhaps gained through work in the voluntary or local authority sector. We are particularly keen to hear from applicants with experience in arts and creativity making change and/or racial justice, but are also interested to hear from those with experience in children and young people's rights, gender justice and migrant justice. This experience could have been gained from the delivering or commissioning programmes in these areas or indeed from a grant making perspective.

Highly organised, intellectually curious and pragmatic, this person will be able to unpick complex information and will be confident in assessing applicants' financial information. They will understand the charity funding world and importantly, the challenges faced by marginalised communities across the UK in the face of widespread inequity. The AFF team works with the Involving Young People's Collective, candidates should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the value of co-production.

IT confident and systematic on their approach, this person will also be helpful and empathetic in addition to being an excellent communicator both in person and in written work. Excellent attention to detail, thorough and collaborative in their approach to work, this person will be a real team player whilst being able to work under their own steam.

An understanding and experience of systems change principles and an appreciation of the nuanced intersections between the various priorities of the AFF programme will be important to success in this role. This role represents a fantastic opportunity for someone with the right skills and experience to really effect positive change and to make a real mark in one of the leading Funders in the UK.