Personal Assistant To The Bishop

This is an exciting opportunity to help Cambridge City Food Bank realise it’s vision of ending the need for foodbanks, through an ambitious strategy creating a network of affordable food clubs, financial inclusion projects, and campaigning to change current systems which contribute to food insecurity – whilst working alongside it’s eight existing foodbank welcome centres.

Reporting to the Development Director, you’ll carry out key administrative tasks, growing the support and development function of the Charity; including stewardship communications with individual donors and creating assets for community supporters to generate food and financial resources. With the support of external consultants, you will assist the securing of income from grant giving trusts and foundations.

Main Duties:

●        Develop strong individual donor relations through regular stewardship communications and powerful fundraising appeals, alongside establishing the associated data and systems; growing supporters.

●        Create community development assets, which enables community groups to engage with and provide resources for the Charity, such as for charitable fundraising / food donation events.

●        Together with the Development Director, secure income from, and maintain relations with grant giving trusts and foundations, including working alongside external consultants.

●        Together with the Development Director, develop a team of volunteers who can support the work of the Charity’s development function.

●        Support the Development Director in their communication with corporate partners, to build good relations, gain and maintain corporate partner support.

●        Liaise with colleagues across the Trussell Trust network; sharing best practice and participating in learning opportunities, to further the work of Cambridge City Foodbank.

●        Other administrative activities may be requested from time to time by the CEO, Development Director and senior staff, consistent with the needs of the Charity.

Personal Specification:

Technical skills and minimum knowledge:

●        Strong administrative experience, highly organised, and able to effectively juggle multiple administrative tasks at the same time!

●        Competent in the use of Zoom/Teams and MS Office software.

●        Excellent written and verbal communication and relationship management skills, you will inspire and motivate existing and prospective supporters, providing excellent stewardship and crafting compelling donor updates, applications and appeals.

NB. Experience of charitable fundraising is not essential when demonstrating the strong transferable skills above. Training will be provided.

Behaviours and competencies:

●        Friendly, trustworthy and able to maintain confidentiality.

●        Able to demonstrate empathy for people from disadvantaged, marginalised or socially-excluded backgrounds.

●        Be committed to the vision, respect the ethos and uphold the values of Cambridge City Foodbank and Trussell Trust.

Our Vision, Ethos & Values:

Our Vision is to end the need for UK foodbanks. Each day we meet the need for emergency and affordable food, and tackle the causes of poverty, by harnessing the power of the community. We are an independent local charity and member of the Trussell Trust network.

We value dignity, justice, compassion, community and impact, in all that we do. We serve local people regardless of background, inspired by our Christian ethos and values.

As part of our commitment to inclusion, diversity and equity actively encourage applications from under-represented groups such as returning parents or carers who are re-entering work after a career break, people who are LGBT+, from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, with a disability, impairment, learning difference or long-term condition, with caring responsibilities, from different nations and regions and those with a lived experience of poverty as well as any other under-represented group in our workforce. We are committed to ensuring the safety and protection of our employees from all forms of harm.

In 2023: our amazing team of 200 volunteers assisted by a small staff team, provided 16,000 3-day emergency food parcels to people across Cambridge (36% were children) and distributed 170,000 Kilos of food.