Director of Partnerships and Philanthropy

Hybrid / Farringdon, London - with international travel

Ref 6756

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for an experienced individual who is dedicated to driving significant impact for children worldwide through innovative partnerships and strategic engagements. 

We are seeking a dynamic, ambitious, and strategic leader to join our team as our Director of Partnerships and Philanthropy. This individual will be committed to achieving our programme, fundraising, special events, and policy goals and enhancing mass supporter engagement by building high-value philanthropic and corporate partnerships.

Please note that:  while you will primarily work from home/remotely, this role requires travel to meet with partners and to attend events, alongside working in line with contractual agreements in the Farringdon, London office. Additionally, there may be travel outside the country for programme and partner visits.

About us

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, make sure their unique needs are met and help their voices to be heard – particularly those who might be discriminated against, including girls and children with disabilities.

About the role

As our Director of Partnerships and Philanthropy, you will provide strategic leadership to our Partnerships and Philanthropy Department and wider leadership to our Fundraising, and Marketing Division. You will set clear goals and objectives that align with our mission and vision, driving significant impact for children. You will lead and inspire a high-performing team, equipping them to operate in an agile environment and providing strategic direction to engage, acquire, steward, and retain corporate partners, philanthropists, and trusts & foundations and execute sector leading special events.

Your leadership will involve inspiring and elevating a team of high-value fundraisers through personal fundraising success, effective pipeline management, and technical leadership in sales behaviours and team coaching. By enhancing partner capabilities and directly delivering on Save the Children's programme, fundraising, special event, and policy goals. 

You will also lead and inspire a high performing team responsible for delivering our high-value fundraising and stewardship events. These events are deigned to generate vital unrestricted income, engage donors, and stakeholders, and introducing new individuals to the organisation.

This is a very visible and strategic role within SCUK and in this role, you will:

• Collaborate with the Director of Programme Partnerships to develop and execute the overall Partnerships for Impact Strategy.

• Build a seamless, future-fit partnership management capability in collaboration with the Director of Programme Partnerships, unlocking innovation for transformational programmes through high impact partnering.

• Maximise the strategic value of partners through deep partner-centricity, leveraging strategic input from our Corporate Advisory Board, Vice Presidents, Women's Network, and co-creation efforts.

• Convene high impact multistakeholder opportunities to drive transformational change.

• Advocate for Save the Children's brand, creating and developing partnership opportunities with strategic brand alignment.

• Collaborate with the Director of Innovation to take a considered, bold approach to innovative finance.

• Lead the development of transformational products and propositions for high-value audiences, enhancing their awareness and consideration of our brand.

• Increase high-value audiences' financial contributions and their direct involvement in our programme, innovation, policy goals, and mass supporter engagement strategy.

• Be an active member of the Global Partnerships & Philanthropy Leadership Group and provide support to the Head of Save the Children's Africa Philanthropy Initiative.

• Lead a high-value operations team, managing pipeline performance, donation acceptance, programme visits, and infocomms across all high-value teams.

• Actively contribute as a member of the Senior Leadership Team in Fundraising and Marketing and Save the Children's Corporate Senior Leadership Team.

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• Proven track record of securing and growing multi-million-pound relationships over multiple years in fundraising or commercial business development.

• Demonstrable commercial acumen with experience managing P&Ls of £30m+, within senior-level client management or sales environments.

• Extensive experience of working within a philanthropy setting, delivering a high value fundraising and stewardship events portfolio.

• Expertise in pipeline management for driving sales effectiveness.

• Understanding of transformational partnerships and engagement partnerships to drive brand awareness and action among mass audiences.

• Strong collaborative skills and the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.

• Proven leadership skills with experience inspiring and improving sales team performance.

Personal Skills:

• Team player capable of motivating and working through others to achieve outstanding results.

• Effective convenor, creating synergy and maximising collective impact.

• Ambitious, proactive, and adept at simplifying complexity to create opportunities and deliver results.

• Clear and compelling communicator.

• Flexible, tenacious, and results driven.

 What we offer you:

• A diverse, unique role where no two days are the same, with huge capacity to build and acquire new personal and professional skills and create your own scope to make change within one of the world's leading international charities.  

• An organisation that believes in innovation and a diverse set of brilliant colleagues who are both experts in their fields and collaborators and supporters of innovation. 

• Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. We also understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance.

• To have the best (and happiest) employees, we focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing – both in and outside of work.

• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day.

Interviews currently scheduled for w/c 15th July and 22nd July.

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here.