Community Fundraising Manager

We're looking for a Community Fundraising Manager - it's a great opportunity to develop a plan and deliver a diverse portfolio of fundraising activities to engage people with our work and contribute to our income.

You will manage a team to help develop innovative fundraising products, grow our supporter base and provide exceptional supporter stewardship.

Income generation  

• Responsible for supporting the development of a 3-year community fundraising income strategy to grow income from a modest base of £125k per year to circa £275k per year.  
• Implement the operational plan for community fundraising income. 
• Plan, develop and deliver new community fundraising products, campaigns and events that will resonate with stakeholders including members, donors and volunteers to fundraise. 
• Work collaboratively with Comms, Marketing & Digital teams to develop and drive forward promotion of community fundraising to reach existing and new audiences, including developing content for social channels, e-comms, webpages and fundraising packs.  
• Establish a network of community fundraisers, building relationships with community fundraising ‘champions’, and providing excellent supporter care and timely communication. 
• Evaluate community fundraising projects regularly and make changes when necessary. 

Leadership, management and collaboration 

• Lead the community fundraising programme in line with Marine Conservation Society values and organisational culture.  
• Contribute to fundraising cross-team planning and strategy development. 
• Line management of 2 part-time Community Fundraising support roles with responsibility for operational delivery of their fundraising plans and performance management including, 1-2-1 meetings, appraisals, day-day performance management against KPI’s, motivation and objective setting. 
• Build collaborative relationships with peers across the charity. 

Governance & reporting 

• Manage the overall budget for community fundraising, including monitoring of income and expenditure against budget. 
• Setting, measuring, and reporting against agreed KPIs  
• Ensure the Community Fundraising team are accurately recording the receipt of donations and gifts received from supporters. 
• Ensure accurate financial and CRM supporter records are maintained and accessible. 
• Ensure all relationships comply with relevant charity law, GDPR requirements and the charity’s Ethical Fundraising Policy.  
• Work with our Data Manager, Head of Marketing, and the Fundraising team to ensure the CRM database holds key, relevant profile information on supporters.  
• Attend department and organisational meetings reporting on team related matters as required and cascading organisational priorities as appropriate.   

Knowledge and experience (what you’ll know)

Essential

• A track record in community fundraising or similar, with the ability to demonstrate success in meeting financial targets and income growth. 
• Can demonstrate your experience of supporting the development of 3-5 year strategic plans 
• Experience of developing and leading on annual operating plans in line with strategic goals.  
• Can show your line management experience, including knowledge of successfully developing and motivating a team. 
• Can successfully set and manage multi-year budgets. 
• Good knowledge of and experience of working with CRM databases including the collection and storage of data in line with GDPR. 
• Sound knowledge of current fundraising trends and knowledge of fundraising policies, procedures and legalities. 

Desirable

• Experience of establishing and growing new community fundraising products. 
• Project management experience, able to plan and deliver within set timescales.  

Skills & abilities (how you’ll do it)

Essential

• Able to take responsibility for delivering against objectives and monitor and evaluate operational and financial plans. 
• Excellent interpersonal skills including relationship building, influencing and negotiating with a wide diverse audience  
• Able to work as a leader and motivate others.  
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including attention to detail.  
• Strong planning skills and the ability to manage a varied and busy workload while meeting tight deadlines. 
• Self-motivated and able to demonstrate creativity, initiative and work proactively 
• Ability and confidence to represent the organisation with potential and existing donors. 

Desirable

• Strong IT skills, including MS 365 tools (Teams, SharePoint, One Drive etc.) Word, PowerPoint, Excel etc.  

Personal Qualities (what you’ll bring)

A personal style in line with our values and our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion: 

We are brave                                        We have integrity  

We are a community                          We are credible  

We are positive                                     We are solutions focused  

•  An innovative and creative thinker who is quick to generate solutions and ideas.  
• Comfortable with change, with a flexible and adaptable approach to work, with good prioritization skills. 
• Approaches problems with a creative and enabling mindset to seek solutions. 
• Responds positively to challenges – managing your personal responses when things get busy   
• Comfortable and capable when working independently and on own initiative.  
• Motivated and focused in both the home working and busier working environments.  
• A good team player who builds open and supportive relationships. 
• A positive, optimistic, and ambitious vision for the future of Community Fundraising. 
• Collaborative and team-oriented approach, with the ability to work effectively with colleagues across different functions and levels.  
• Proactive and results-driven mindset, with a focus on achieving measurable outcomes.