Business Development Officer

About us

Founded in 1951, the Refugee Council exists to support people who come to the UK in need of safety and speak out for compassion, fairness and kindness. We achieve this by providing expert advice and casework, building the capacity of refugee community organisations, and working with allies across society to change government policy.

Our vision for refugees to be welcome to live safe and fulfilling lives contributing to the UK has never been more urgent and needed. Today 27 million refugees and 84 million displaced people around the world need of safety, dignity and welcome. We are determined to secure public and government support for safe routes for all people seeking safety, and a fair, effective and compassionate refugee protection system.

Business Development at Refugee Council

We operate two main service departments supporting refugees (resettlement, employment, and integration) and people seeking asylum (casework, therapeutic support, and social support for adults and children. We also have a smaller Practice Development team supporting Refugee Community Organisations and frontline practitioners to develop their skills and capacity to meet the needs of people seeking asylum and refugees. Our Business Development team sits within our Fundraising and External Affairs team and works closely with our services directorate.

The purpose of this role is to bolster the resource of our Business Development team in order to build the foundations for statutory income generation for Refugee Council in the immediate term and for the future. The key elements of the role are to:

• Identify the appropriate statutory commissioners to liaise with when presenting our service models. This is a time intensive task that requires research via different platforms and networks (e.g. LinkedIn, web searches, internal colleague contacts, and related market insights).
• Assess feedback and insights following engagement with commissioners, identify patterns and opportunities, and contribute towards Business Development’s funder engagement and fundraising strategy.
• Prepare background documents, such as up-to-date context statements and summaries, for use in proposals, tenders, service models, and related Business Development products. Lead on various administrative tasks to support the function of the Business Development team, such as completing selection questionnaires for competitive tenders.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Research:

• Our Business Development Officer will lead the researching and mapping statutory commissioners, service delivery partners, and providers to produce a clear picture of service delivery landscape, commissioner interests, and commissioning trends to inform business development strategies across our geographical hub areas.
• They will identify appropriate and influential statutory commissioners (via internal colleagues, LinkedIn, online searches, and related sources) for Business Development colleagues to contact. Through their detailed research they will build an in-depth understanding of commissioner roles and remit, interests, and priority areas of work that will help us influence statutory commissioners.
• They will lead on developing and maintaining content-rich, in depth evidence-based summaries on clients’ and commissioners’ evolving needs for use in proposals, tenders, service models, and strategy documents. These summaries will be highly persuasive and enable to team to influence funders. They will be required to analyse complex data and evidence presenting asylum and refugee trends and figures as well as statutory funding available across a range of sources.

Contract: Fixed term until 31/10/2025.

Hours: Full-time, 35 hours per week (would be open to part time working of 28 hours for the right candidate).

Location: Negotiable.

For more information on the role and to apply, please visit our website via the apply button.

Closing date: 14 February 2025.

Interviews: 19 - 27 February 2025.

Ensuring that the Refugee Council is an inclusive and accessible place to work is important to us. We want to enable people from different backgrounds to apply and thrive with us. We believe our recruitment process enables that and are also happy to make adjustments on request.