Fundraising Senior Strategic Projects Manager

We are a multi-award winning, creative and innovative organisation with an exciting vacancy to manage the strategic projects fundraising stream of our work. You will be at the heart of the Fundraising and Communications team, focusing on creative and strategic fundraising.

The projects you manage will span many areas but focus on raising income within the creative industry and delivering special events for War Child. You will collaborate with external advisors, partners and ambassadors across the industry including art, film, TV and fashion – using your experience and expertise to design, assess and deliver projects. As this is a relatively new area of fundraising your instinct and assessment of potential projects will be key.

You will work with fundraising teams to identify opportunities and develop projects and activations that maintain the values, creativity and entrepreneurialism of War Child UK.

You will report directly to the Head of Fundraising Engagement, maximising the potential of our fundraising through superb management of projects and opportunities. You will work across the whole of the fundraising department, co-ordinating and leading to ensure cross departmental projects are delivered to their maximum potential, to drive income and achieve our strategic goals.

This role would suit someone from a cultural arts background and from a creative charitable background, with experience of strong project management.

If you share our values and believe that children’s lives should not be torn apart by war, we want to hear from you.

War Child, the specialist charity for children affected by conflict. For more than two decades we’ve been delivering high-impact programmes that are rebuilding lives across Afghanistan, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic and Yemen. We understand children’s needs, respect their rights, and put them at the centre of the solution – from reintegrating children formerly associated with armed groups and armed forces (CAAFAG) in the Central African Republic to reuniting children with their families in Afghanistan. We look forward to a world in which the lives of children are no longer torn apart by war. This is a vision that can only be realised through the collective actions of children themselves, communities and their leaders, organisations like War Child, governments and key decision makers.

Child safeguarding and Adults at Risk

Our work with children and at-risk adults to keep them safe is the most important thing we do. We are committed to the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults in all areas of our work. We have zero tolerance for any behaviours and practices that puts children and/or vulnerable adults at risk of abuse and/or harm.

Your role

Lead existing and new projects in the Fundraising and Communications team, working most closely with colleagues in Music and Comms & Content teams. Your role will have an impact across the whole department and beyond fundraising as you lead teams of colleagues to deliver superb projects and genuinely new and exciting activities.

A major part of your role will be working with your colleagues to assess new opportunities, understand their strategic value and then deliver projects to ensure their success. The core aim being to raise funds, one off or sustainable, to benefit War Child’s work.

Strategic Projects aims to grow War Child’s ability to generate income within creative industries – across art, fashion, TV and film. You will need to approach this growth strategically to ensure long term income growth. Utilising War Child and your own experience in this area will be key – working with or setting up advisory boards to explore and deliver new or existing activations.

Longer term, a robust innovation and evaluation process will ensure further growth and increase sustainable income prospects.

Sometimes you will oversee management of projects and opportunities, and at other points you will be directly responsible for their success. Your role will be both proactive and reactive, ensuring the projects you deliver, or support, are delivering against their objectives.

Whilst your remit is wide, your role is a fundraising role and you will be responsible for delivering income and enabling our strategic growth. You will support the Head of Fundraising Engagement on the overall Fundraising Engagement strategy and work directly with the Director of Fundraising and Communications on department performance and ensuring that the Fundraising Directorate remains successful, ambitious, high performing and innovative.

Your responsibilities

• Directly manage projects or oversee project delivery to ensure success, ensuring project documentation and budgets are in place and that they are adequately resourced. You will lead these project teams or support project management to ensure successful delivery.
• Confidently set and deal with complex and multi-layered budgets, many of which will be across multiple teams.
• To reactively assess opportunities that are brought to you, determine feasibility and decide on the best way of moving these forwards.
• To proactively explore project and fundraising opportunities within the creative industry. Assess these in a robust way and present findings to internal stakeholders.
• Clearly define and understand project objectives, looking at long term and short term gain.
• Build relationships with external stakeholders in the creative industry to support this area of growth. Consider stakeholder opinions and expertise, use existing data to assess options, explore opportunities and prioritise the most strategic projects for delivery.
• Maintain a culture of delivering excellent relationship management with existing external stakeholders – including being the primary or secondary relationship manager for specific stakeholders. This will include personal meetings, attending networking events, writing proposals, making presentations and representing War Child at meetings with key influences and ambassadors.
• To develop first-rate relationships with internal stakeholders so that colleagues are motivated and engaged in the project management and innovation function.
• Work closely with colleagues across the department to deliver strong Ambassador and Advocate relationship management across our celebrity and industry networks
• Project manage, end to end, War Child’s Winter Wassail – an intimate, invite-only gala
• Provide first-rate line management to the Strategic Projects Manager, as well as any freelancers delivering projects, events or activations. You will model excellence in management that will result in your reports thriving in their role, with high standards of performance and behaviour. As a senior member of the Fundraising Engagement team you will model these high standards of performance and behaviour to support the Head of Fundraising Engagement.
• Support the Head of Fundraising Engagement and Director of Fundraising and Communications on the development and implementation of department strategy, budgeting, reporting and planning.
• Always maintain an up to date knowledge of current activities of War Child and be an advocate of the War Child brand
• Create and embed a culture of development, continuous improvement and success across the Fundraising Department
• Contribute to creating a culture committed to the safeguarding of children and adults and compliant to WCUK’s Child Safeguarding and Adults at Risk Policies.

These duties provide a framework for the role and should not be regarded as a definitive list. Other reasonable duties may be required consistent with the grade of the role.

You are

• Experienced in planning, budgeting and monitoring performance across multiple projects, including the management of six figure income streams
• Experienced in working in a target led environment with a proven track record of successful results, delivering against targets and income growth.
• Experienced in strategic planning and strategic decision making.
• Able to demonstrate experience of successfully planning and delivering complex events.
• Strong experience of critically evaluating new and existing projects to prioritise workload and maximise project effectiveness
• Someone with experience in or a strong interest in the creative arts
• Highly resilient, with the ability to work in ambiguous circumstances, negotiate challenging relationships and manage multiple priorities
• Solid experience of line management and a strong understanding of the principles of motivational people management and individual development.
• An excellent communicator, confident in managing relationships, influencing and negotiating with the ability to present and sell credible recommendations to the Senior Management Team, Heads of Departments and external partners.
• A highly competent user of insight to inform decision making and product and/or process improvement
• Up to date knowledge of fundraising regulation and GDPR, and its implications for fundraising policy and practise.

All candidates for roles based in the UK are required to have the right to work in the UK.