- Job Title: Head of Social Investment Programmes
- Salary: Competitive
- Contract: Permanent
An exciting opportunity has arisen to be an active leader in the Programmes team at Power To Change, created to oversee social investment and several sector specific programmes.
Reporting to: Director of Programmes
Direct reports: Four Programme Managers
Location: Sheffield, with travel to the Power to Change offices in London and Bristol at least once a week
Salary: £57,500 to £61,000
Deadline for applications: Wednesday, 19th June
Interviews to be held on Wednesday, 26th June
Power to Change is the small independent charitable trust that supports community businesses in England, endowed by the National Lottery Community Fund. Our vision is better places through community business. We want to back people to build successful community businesses for the benefit of their local places.
This new role will bring together four programmes (already in delivery) which will benefit from senior management oversight to make sure we maximise our impact on supporting community businesses to become less grant reliant, by exploring a range of financing available to them, including equity raised through community share offers, social finance, and grants. Significant working knowledge of the range of social finance and grant funding available to community businesses will be essential to this role. The portfolio of programmes sitting under this role also focus on community-led housing, community energy and community pubs, so knowledge and working experience of at least one of these sectors will be invaluable.
With four direct reports, you will be responsible for ensuring your Programme Managers have the right capacity, budget and support to deliver high quality programmes. You will be working with highly committed and knowledgeable colleagues. Your role in identifying learning, improvement opportunities and potential connections between these programmes will ensure we can continue to offer the best possible quality support, as well as money, to community businesses.
Working closely with two other Programme Heads as well as colleagues in the Research, Market Development, Communications & Partnerships and Finance teams, you will be jointly responsible for delivering against the business plan, managing risks and ensuring activities are delivered to a high standard, within budget and meeting key performance indicators. Your focus on achieving organisational goals above individual goals means you will easily be able to build good working relationships within the team so that you can share your personal experience and programme portfolio learning with wider projects focusing on community owned assets and place-based working.
Local, regional and national experience of building and maintaining strong external relationships and partnerships will mean you can use existing contacts and develop new ones with other social finance organisations and grant funders. This will mean we can leverage in knowledge, resources and connections to continuously improve the offer we can make to sector-specific community businesses.
We are looking for enthusiastic, resilient and pragmatic candidates who can bring their relevant experience and skills together with our ambitious plans and fast paced work environment. Our desire to be responsive to sector needs and feedback means we are continuously seeking to refine and improve our programmes, so an ability to be flexible in your working approach is really key.
Role Purpose:
This role exists to make sure community businesses can seek and access the right type of support and funding, whether that be capacity building support, equity investment funding, loans or grants. The role has a specific focus on the community housing, community energy and community pubs sectors, as well as oversight of our community shares match funding programme.
The post holder will be responsible for ensuring successful delivery of programmes by their team, identifying key learning and improvement opportunities, as well as building relationships and knowledge of the wider social investment and community business sectors in order to make sure Power to Change’s programmes remain relevant within a changing external context.
Key responsibilities:
Programme delivery
- Accountability for oversight of effective delivery of portfolio of social investment and sector programmes.
- Ensuring coherence and effective links across portfolio of programmes, as well as other Power to Change programmes and work streams
- Decision-making and recommendations to Director of Programmes relating to programme planning and budgeting
- Proactively driving continuous programme improvement and development, using knowledge and experience of social investment and relevant sectors to identify how grants can be mixed with other financing options through close partnership with social investors
Management and leadership
- Line management of a team of four programme managers including providing advice, support, challenge and acting as a ‘sounding’ board for team, as well as supporting team
- Being an active leader in the Programmes team including informing and implementing Programme strategy to develop a shared sense of working within one Programmes team.
- Being an active member of the management team to further develop a shared sense of one organisation working towards delivering against the business plan.
- Building and maintaining strong working relationships with colleagues to bring together market development, communications, research and partnership opportunities and resources to maximise social and financial impact of programmes
Building external relationships
- Senior external partnership relationship management to develop and expand on relevant external learning and opportunities for collaboration to continuously improve and develop programme delivery
- Proactive engagement with relevant external activities and expertise, including:
- social investors
- sectorspecific bodies
- grant makers, trusts and foundations
- think tanks
Provide ad-hoc assistance to other team members as required.
This job description is issued as a guideline to assist you in your duties, it is not exhaustive. Because of the evolving nature and changing demands of our work this job description may be subject to change. You may, on occasions, be required to undertake additional or other duties within the context of this job description
Skills and experience:
- Senior partnership management and relationship building at local, national and regional level
- Significant senior management experience, including risk management, budget oversight, planning and delivery
- Demonstrable experience of working within and/or understanding the social investment sector, including but not limited to loans and community shares.
- Significant experience working across at least two of the following areas of work within the sector: energy, housing; capital assets; cross-sector working; place-based working.
- Demonstrable commitment to working collaboratively – internally and externally.
We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all candidates irrespective of race, age, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or belief, or marital or civil partnership status. We will assess all applications against the requirements for this post as detailed in the job description and person specification and ask for names and education history to be removed from applications.
We are Disability Confident Committed, we welcome and respond positively to applications from disabled people. We will meet individual needs throughout the recruitment process, including making any appropriate reasonable adjustments during the interview stage and to our workplace if selected into post to support colleagues with any form of disability. If you meet the minimum requirements for the role and would like a guaranteed interview please email nicolaf@powertochange.org.uk, you do not need to share any details about your disability at this stage.
As a Mindful Employer we recognise that in the UK, people experiencing mental ill health continue to report stigma and discrimination. We are committed to creating a supportive and open culture, where colleagues are able to talk about mental health. We are also committed to ensuring that our employees feel safe in disclosing any mental health conditions and confident that they will be properly supported and offered reasonable adjustments when required.
If you have any questions about how Power to Change is an equal opportunities employer please contact our Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator, Edward on edwardw@powertochange.org.uk
