Business Development Officer

Are you looking for a new challenge? Are you keen to develop your influencing and sales skills to help Chapter One attract and unlock corporate partnerships for the benefit of struggling young readers?

40% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds leave primary school in England each year unable to read to the expected standard. Many children fall behind with reading simply because they lack the opportunity to practise: Chapter One works to ensure that every child has 1:1 reading support at the time they need it most. We have a vision of a world in which all children have the literacy skills they need to thrive.

Our unique Online Reading Volunteer programme currently supports about 3,000 children a year. It pairs disadvantaged, struggling five to eight-year old readers with reading support volunteers who come from over 140 local and national businesses. The volunteer ask is very focused: readers commit 30 minutes a week to read with a child using a bespoke digital platform for an entire academic year. The results are transformative, boosting children's reading confidence and ability.

We set ourselves ambitious targets. We want to support 3,900 children by 2025/6 and this Business Development Officer role, with responsibility for building new corporate partnerships, will be crucial to ensuring that we have sufficient volunteers to achieve this target.

We are seeking a proactive, energetic and enthusiastic individual to be an integral part of a Corporate Partnerships team which aims to maximise corporate income, acheive volunteer targets and and take Chapter One into new regions across the UK. This is an opportunity for an early career professional to learn about charity-business partnerships in a dynamic, small charity which is flexible and agile.

Please read the full job description for details of the responsibilities of the role, and our employee recruitment pack to learn more about Chapter One. This is a fully remote position, but we do need someone who is within two hours travelling distance of London, Manchester and Leeds and is able to travel to occasional meetings and events.

As a charity that values and celebrates people's diversity and champions opportunities for all young people, we are keen to receive applications from people who have experienced disadvantage and from those who are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities who are currently underrepresented in the organisation. We believe that a diverse organisation is one that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results.

Chapter One is committed to safeguarding children and young people. All postholders are subject to a satisfactory enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service disclosure. Copies of our Safeguarding Policy and Safer Recruitment Policy are available on request.