Funding Officer

Hours of work:Full-time working to broadly standard office hours (35-hour week). We will also consider candidates looking to work 0.8 full-time. Core office days for all staff are Tuesday and Wednesday.

Reports to:Director of Creative Confident Communities (CCC)

The role:

This role will work within the Creative, Confident Communities (CCC) Team supporting the delivery of the Foundation’s strategy, specifically focussed on place-based change across the UK.

This is a unique opportunity to work across a range of organisations, initiatives and projects that are seeking to create place-based change, working with communities across the UK to achieve this. The Foundation has independence, resources and influence that enable them to move at pace and make a positive difference for people and communities in the UK. They have ambition and an appetite for risk, to try new things and work with new and unusual partnerships to deliver their aims. A key question that guides the Foundation’s work and action is "what more can we do?" - the Foundation is looking for someone to join them and contribute to answering that question.

This will include working on activities aimed at delivering on the aims and objectives of the programme. This is a very relational role with emphasis on building and brokering collaborations, attending webinars, forums and conferences to further harness sector learning relevant to the aims of the CCC programme.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We are committed to social justice, and to tackling injustice and inequality. Racial justice is a critical element in this, in the UK and across the world, and we are committed to addressing structural and systemic racism in the UK both as an organisation and through the work we support.

We believe that understanding and making progress towards diversity, equity, and inclusion will be critical for delivering our mission. To do this, we have worked with the whole team to explore and agree our shared organisational values and developed an action plan - involving both Trustees and staff. To ensure we keep making progress, we regularly review our action plan, committing to further actions and sharing them alongside our actions so far.

We want our progress towards diversity, equity and inclusion to be measured by our actions, and are keen to encourage feedback, challenge, and new ideas from everyone we work alongside.

Purpose of Job:

To provide support to the Foundation’s assessment and management of applications and funding. In particularto:

• Assess funding applications as delegated by senior members of the funding tea
• Managea broad portfolio of grants and funding relationships.
• Gather learning from funded work through consideration of reports, telephone interviewsand other evidence to inform future funding activity.
• Occasional support to a programme of strategic work across the CCC priorities.

Core responsibilities

1. To ensure the effective management of alarge andmixed portfolio of grants and funding relationships through liaising with applicants, reading reports and attending to appropriate administration using the Foundation’s database.
2. To maintain contact with supported projects and monitor their work in line with the Foundation’s learning and impact strategy.
3. To manage a caseload of funding applicationsunder supervision from senior members of the funding team,includinganalysing written proposals, seeking further information, giving advice to and taking advice from colleagues, advisers or other funders.
4. To write up assessment reports on applications with recommendations for considerationadhering to agreed timeframes.
5. To be a positive and active member of the Foundation team working with and supporting colleagues in helping the Foundation deliver the strategic plan.
6. To undertake any other duties in support of the Foundation’s business as may reasonably be required.

Qualifications

• Agoodlevel of intellectual and analytical ability is required. This may be evidenced by a professional qualification, by working at a levelof responsibilitycomparable to this post or a degree.

Significant interfaces

• Internally: all staff and trustees,in particularseniormembers of the funding team
• Externally: potential and existingapplicants andrecipients of funding, other sector partners.

Skills and Experience

• Knowledge and experience of oneor moreareas of the Foundation’s Creative Confident Communities impact goal.
• Experience of database use as part of job role (the Foundation uses Salesforce, experience would be ideal, but any mainstream database experience helpful).
• Naturally curious and interested in the work and the people supported by the Foundation
• Understanding of the context in which communities operate.
• Understanding of the range of activities undertaken by charities, voluntary organisations, community organisations and social enterprises in this sector.
• Ability to interpret and resolvecomplex informationincluding financial information and business plans.
• Goodlistening andcommunication skills, including the ability tounderstand and follow colleagues’ instructions andpresent information clearly and concisely in oral and written form.
• Strong administrative skillsand an ability to prioritisethat demonstratea capacityto organise and manage workload to deadlines.
• Competent IT skills including experience of using a database.
• Report writing skills.
• Ability to use initiative and work autonomously but withina supportive environment.