Sustainability Manager

Position type: Full time, permanent, 37.5 hours per week

Responsible to: Director of Finance

Direct reports: None

Location: Truro, Cornwall (hybrid – mixture of office and home working) or remote working (UK only) will be considered (with regular travel to Truro at least 4x per year).

Role purpose:

As a humanitarian organisation, ShelterBox has both an ethical and business imperative not to exasperate environmental degradation through the aid that it provides, and this new role will be at the forefront of helping ShelterBox reduce the environmental impact of its humanitarian action. The Sustainability Manager is an exciting new role for ShelterBox and will be responsible for supporting the implementation of our environmental strategy. This will be a collaborative role working across teams and the sector to research, assess and implement initiatives that will see a reduction in our environmental impact. We want to be innovative and impactful and that lends itself to an exciting opportunity for the right individual.

Who are we looking for?

ShelterBox is seeking a bright, motivated, and proactive individual with great collaboration skills. They must have experience of having implemented a sustainability strategy or having been part of a team in a larger organisation that has done so. Sector experience is not essential but experience from an organisation involved in product sales and freight in an international context would be important.

This role cannot succeed on its own and will be dependent on colleagues throughout the organisation to research and implement changes to working practice. The candidate will need to work alongside teams in the organisation and be their sustainability trusted advisor. This role is therefore a truly collaborative role, and it will be essential that the candidate can build effective cross org relationships to support and influence colleagues. The successful candidate will engage with colleagues across the business, international partners, the wider INGO sector, and the commercial sector, to identify, research and implement new or enhanced shelter offerings with a lower environmental impact or introducing new or amended ways of working that would lead to the same outcomes. This role will need to consider, and carefully balance the environmental imperative with social, economic, and humanitarian needs.

Providing tools, data, and frameworks to support our programme managers project design decision making, will be an essential part of this role. The candidate will therefore also need to be willing to research, analyse and present research data. The successful candidate will have developed an emissions inventory before and be familiar with carbon accounting principles, or be willing to learn, as they will also be responsible for maintaining the charity’s emissions reporting.

The candidate has to be comfortable working across, and regularly switching between, a wide range of levels from the strategic, to the operational and rolling up sleeves to work with detailed reporting data.

They will be able to demonstrate experience in a similar environmental sustainability role, preferably but not essentially, within the INGO sector, with significant management experience and proven knowledge of driving sustainability.

Main role and responsibilities

• Deliver organisation’s Sustainability strategy.
• Work collaboratively across all functions, partners, and sector networks.
• Provide extensive consultative support to our International Programmes and Supply Chain teams.
• Drive analysis of carbon emissions and broader environmental impacts.
• In collaboration with our International Programmes team, research, develop and introduce new or improved ways of working that can reduce the environmental impact of our work. This will likely include engagement with local partners, teams across the organisation, sector bodies, academia, and the commercial sector.
• Collaborate with internal teams to identify new ways of working in shelter design, freight, procurement, and head office activities.
• Introduce and drive internal head office initiatives to reduce our environmental impact and be a constant champion of behaviour change.
• Ensure the charity is compliant with legislative requirements.
• Working in conjunction with our digital and comms team, develop and maintain public communications in relation to our work including website content and annual reports.
• Work with fundraisers to develop calls to action to fund and expand our sustainability agenda.
• Act as the main point of contact for internal and external stakeholders in relation to environmental sustainability helping to maintain and develop relationships.
• Maintain our emissions reporting; and
• Work with internal shelter experts and sector bodies to improve environmental awareness of the impact of our work through improved LCA analysis.

Duties will include areas of responsibility in Strategy, Leadership and Change Management, Operational Improvement, Measurement and Reporting, Communication, Funding and Partnerships and Research. Please look at the full JD for further details.