Sustainability and Impact Lead

About us 

At Morden College we are committed to providing services that support our residents to live independent and healthy lives. More than 250 older people live in Morden College’s almshouse accommodation, on two sites in Blackheath and Beckenham, and in our Care Home.

As part of the Morden College team, you will be committed to challenging ageism, promoting healthy ageing, and combatting loneliness while promoting equity, diversity and inclusion within communities. You will be comfortable with using technology to deliver consistent, equitable, and sustainable services at all times across the charity. You will be a role model for our values and committed to a purposeful, responsible community that is a great place to live and work.

About the role and who we are looking for

We are looking for an experienced sustainability and impact professional to lead our work to drive our Environmental, Social, and Governance and Social Return on Investment goals. This will involve establishing, developing, monitoring and reporting on the impact of our work, both in terms of social impact and sustainability.

The successful candidate for this role will have a strong background in the monitoring and evaluation of social impact and implementation of high environmental standards across services and properties. You will join us as we enter a new strategic phase and play a crucial role in reporting on our progress against our new strategic goals.

Main duties and responsibilities

• Establish a system and process for the monitoring of our social impact as a provider of housing support and other services to older people, including developing our theory of change.

• Assess the measures that will evidence our progress and drive our continuous improvement in delivering our services to older people.

• Put in place robust measures for monitoring the social impact of our grant-making.

• Devise and develop our data collection work in order to evaluate our social and environmental impacts and set and meet KPIs.

• In consultation with SLT and colleagues, develop and lead the charity’s environmental strategy and identify appropriate net-zero transition priorities.

• Set relevant policies and standards for the organisation to follow.

• Set clear, coherent, prioritised actions to reduce environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions.

• Collate and present environmental data from across our property portfolio: both our income-generation investment properties and our operational properties: almshouses, offices, and catering venues.

• Collate and present data on our resident services such as hospitality, housekeeping, and care.

• Communicate with our stakeholders, our residents, staff, and grantees, and develop ways to influence the improvement in impact of all of our activities.

• Lead strategic conversations across the charity to ensure we are focussed on sustainability and impact in all our work.

Person specification

You will have:

• Substantial evidence of working with the voluntary sector, preferably in the impact, monitoring and evaluation, or grant-making.

• Experience of managing data identification, collection, and presentation.

• Excellent relationship building and interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate appropriately, in writing or verbally, with people of all types and at all levels.

• Ability to organise a large workload, prioritising appropriately, with the ability to work quickly but calmly to tight deadlines.

• Ability to interpret complex data sets.

• Proven ability to work with CRM (MS Dynamics or similar) to manage, collect, and present information.

• Able to work flexibly, positively and autonomously.

• The ability to think strategically and see the bigger picture, whilst maintaining attention to detail.

• A high level of personal resilience is required to be successful in this hugely rewarding position. You will be line-managed by the CEO and form part of the Office of the CEO.