Policy And Research Officer

We’re looking for an exceptional person to help us to build the profile of the Fairness Foundation with our core audience - the decision-makers and influencers who can help to build a fairer Britain.

This full-time role, based in or near London, will give you a huge amount of influence at a small charity that punches above its weight. It will provide you with a different challenge every day, from researching key issues and writing briefings to engaging with MPs and journalists.

About the role

To change the debate about fairness in the UK, we need to convince key policy stakeholders – the media, politicians, and a wide variety of experts – that:

• Unfairness and inequality are not only morally wrong but are policy priorities because they are undermining the health of our economy, society, democracy and our natural environment
• The public are more concerned about this agenda, and more supportive of action on it, than is often assumed to be the case, and the same is true for business leaders

You will work closely with the Chief Executive to undertake research and to promote our work to the media, policymakers and other decision-makers and influencers. You will be carrying out research, writing briefings, building relationships with journalists, parliamentarians and partners, working out how to explain complex issues in simple and compelling ways, developing and managing influencing opportunities such as events and publications, reacting to opportunities for impact, generating ideas and feeding into strategies as well as implementing agreed plans.

We’d like you to start as soon as possible. By the end of 2024 you should have made measurable progress in building our profile with the mainstream media and with politicians in Westminster and beyond, as well as producing a range of outputs. This is a full-time role, with flexible hours, but we will consider part-time options. It is mostly home-based, but we can cover some days in a co-working space, and you will need to come into London at least one day per week. We’ll pay you £37-42,000, depending on experience, on a fixed-term one-year employment contract (which we hope to extend, subject to funding).

About you

We’re not interested in your formal qualifications. We’re more focused on your attitude, skills, experience, values and your potential to excel in this role. We need someone who understands how to engage with and influence politicians (and has preferably worked in Parliament), knows how the media works and how to make complex issues newsworthy, and can carry out and write up research quickly and to a very high standard.

We are looking for a gifted storyteller who communicates well in writing and in person. You should thrive on the uncertainty, agility and lack of structure of a start-up, and be a dynamic self-starter who can work well and quickly with minimal supervision. You will need to be inventive and open-minded, and to combine strategic vision with attention to detail and the ability to execute.

You will need to show us that you have the following character traits in spades, in order to succeed in (and really enjoy) this role:

Accountability | Autonomy Boldness | Creativity Drive | Enthusiasm Flexibility | Generosity Humility | Humour Organisation | Reliability Resilience Resourcefulness Tenacity | Warmth

Diversity and inclusion

The Fairness Foundation’s core mission is to build a society where everyone has genuinely equal opportunities to make the most of their lives, which means that the structural barriers that some people and groups face have been dismantled.

We also recognise that, as an organisation, we need to reflect the diversity of the society that we work in, and that having a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture will make us more effective in achieving our goals, for a variety of reasons.

We actively seek candidates from under-represented groups, such as people from working-class backgrounds, women, black and minority ethnic people, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people, including people with personal experience of barriers to fair life chances.