Do you have impressive people skills and a passion for building relationships? Centre for London, the capital’s dedicated think tank, is looking for a new Senior Development Officer to help grow our support from individuals, trusts and foundations, as well as our corporate sponsorship offer.
Centre for London is a politically independent think tank focused on the big challenges facing London. It aims to help London build on its long history as a centre of economic, social, and intellectual innovation and exchange, and create a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable city. Through its research and events, the Centre acts as a critical friend to London’s leaders and policymakers, promotes a wider understanding of the challenges facing London, and develops long-term, rigorous and radical solutions for the capital.
The role
By helping to secure funding for our research and events programme, your work will be vital in ensuring Centre for London can continue developing new solutions to London’s critical challenges and advocate for a fair and prosperous global city. In this role, you’ll be helping to tackle some of London’s biggest policy challenges, focusing on employment and skills, transport and public realm, neighbourhood resilience, and London’s place in the UK and the world.
We have a varied fundraising portfolio with an established corporate sponsorship programme, growing relationships with trusts and foundations, and a number of major donors. The Centre is currently primarily funded on a project-by-project basis, though core funding and individual giving is growing.
Day-to-day you will help shape and implement the fundraising strategy, with the support of the Development Manager and working with the Director. The particular focus of the role will be on prospecting, building relationships and securing support from individual philanthropic donors.
At Centre for London, we pride ourselves on our strong culture of collaboration. As such, you will work closely with the research, events and communications teams to ensure continued fundraising success.
Key roles and responsibilities
This role would best suit someone who already has some experience in fundraising and/ or philanthropy, or a related field such as relationship management.
We don’t ask that you are an expert in London policy issues – though understanding of and interest in urban policy, and relationships in those fields, would be helpful. But you will need to be able to learn quickly, think creatively and communicate compellingly.
If you meet the criteria in the person specification and are excited about this opportunity, we’d love to hear from you. Unfortunately, we cannot accept applications from individuals without the right to work in the UK.
Key Responsibilities include:
- Proactively research and identify suitable individuals and organisations to interest in the Centre’s work through incisive prospect research, formulating strategies for engagement.
- Relationship manage existing and potential supporters, proactively identifying opportunities to engage them, and taking ownership of some of these relationships where appropriate.
- Make fundraising approaches and attend meetings with existing and potential funders as appropriate.
- Support the Development Manager in implementing a programme of stewardship to engage existing and potential supporters, including administering digital and hard copy mailings and delivering agreed sponsor benefits in a timely manner.
- Draft impact reports for funders, whether donors or sponsors, and assist in the production of the annual funding report.
- Research and identify new trusts and foundations that the Centre could approach for project or core funding and support the Research team with grant applications.
- Ensure that Salesforce, Centre for London’s CRM database, is kept up-to-date and accurately reflects the status of fundraising approaches.
- Maintain and improve Salesforce through adding new contacts, data cleaning, coding contacts for relationship management and proactively suggesting improvements.
- Support the Research and Events teams in their fundraising and contribute to their project budgeting.
- Assist at Centre for London events, which may occasionally be outside of normal working hours.
- Contribute to the development and growth of the organisation through working in accordance with its wider objectives, corporate philosophy and values of integrity, excellence, collaboration, growth, respect and fun.
- Being able to ‘pitch’ Centre for London and talk about how we work, including the benefits of supporting us.
- Undertake other projects and tasks as appropriate.
Experience and skills
Experience:
- Proven experience of managing relationships with funders, VIPs and/or senior level stakeholders.
- Some experience of fundraising and development in either or both of the following areas:
- High Net Worth/major donor fundraising, ideally with a track record of building relationships and securing major gifts.
- Corporate fundraising, ideally with a track record of building relationships with corporate prospects to secure sponsorship.
- Alternatively, relevant experience in a related field.
- Experience in fundraising from trusts and foundations is an advantage.
- Experience of planning, implementing and evaluating projects
Skills/Competencies
- Dynamic, self-motivated and focused with a proactive approach.
- Highly developed interpersonal skills (written and oral) – being able to communicate clearly, concisely and engagingly with team members, trustees and external audiences.
- Putting creative ideas forward, taking initiative and solving problems.
- Highly organised with acute attention to detail.
- Ability to ensure compliance with the Institute of Fundraising Code of Practice; maintain confidentiality and work with financial data and personal data within ICO and GDPR regulations framework.
- Appreciation for Centre for London’s mission and values
- An appreciation of the role think tanks play in the development of public policy.
- An interest in cities, London in particular, and the urban environment is an advantage.
Other information
To apply for this role please register your application via the link provided.
Then email your CV and cover letter to [email protected] with the subject line “Senior Development Officer”. Your application should show how your experience and achievements to date would make you a suitable candidate for this role (no more than three pages total). Your application should be saved as a single PDF with your name as a title.
Deadline – 9am on Monday 25th June 2018
We may close applications earlier than the deadline. We do not want any contact from recruitment agencies regarding this vacancy.
We’re a London Living Wage and an equal opportunities employer – an ethos which also informs our work. We value the ideas and input of every team member and we regularly hold team-wide sessions to give everyone the opportunity to shape our future work.
We also know that there’s much more to life than work. Our flexible hours policy allows staff to make sure work fits around their personal lives. Benefits include 25 days of holiday per year (plus extra days during office closure between Christmas and New Year), a generous contributory pension and a cycle scheme. People who have worked with us for more than two years may also be able to take career breaks of up to six months, giving them time for personal or professional development or to simply take an extended holiday!