Programmes Officer

The Snowdon Trust is dismantling barriers and championing equality for disabled students and graduates. We aim to equip disabled students and graduates with the tools, resources, and opportunities needed to thrive, and challenge systematic barriers and structures that prevent them from achieving educational and career goals.

• We deliver two financial award programmes. Grants provide crucial financial support to cover additional costs incurred by disabled students that otherwise disadvantage them. Annually, we allocate approximately £250,000 to alleviate the financial burden of disability for items like mobility equipment, accessible accommodation and assistive technology. The Snowdon Master’s Scholarship, worth up to £30,000, is awarded annually to a small number of exceptional disabled students, accelerating their journey into workplace leadership. These financial awards help level the playing field and support disabled students to succeed academically and professionally.

• We’ve established the Disabled Leaders Network (DLN): The DLN is a dynamic forum for disabled students and graduates to connect and collaborate on themes of leadership and disability. This member-led network empowers its participants through speaker events, webinars, and information-sharing to upskill and support them to drive disability inclusion. The DLN is a hub for change-makers and the disabled leaders of the future.

• Partnerships, Research, and Campaigning: We commission wide-scale research to understand and address the needs and challenges faced by our community. We collaborate with other organisations to leverage expertise and add value to our initiatives. Through strategic partnerships, research, and advocacy campaigns, we aim to contribute to a more inclusive society. Our research informs policy and practice, while our campaigns raise awareness and drive systemic change for disability inclusion.

Your role

Yours is a critical role at the heart of our charity. You will be the first point of contact for anyone reaching out to us for support across the range of our programmes and you’ll guide them throughout their relationship with us.

A core part of your role will be to support our financial award programmes. This will include supporting and guiding applicants through the application process, screening applications, helping to prepare papers for selection panel reviewers, and onboarding and communicating with applicants after the award decisions have been made.

You’ll ensure that information and signposting for students is clear and effective and keep our information channels up to date including the creation of social media content which provides information to applicants.

It’s an exciting time to join the Snowdon Trust – we’re working on a new three-year strategy to help us meet our accessibility and inclusion goals for disabled students. It’s likely that our programme activity will expand and you’ll be able to get involved from the outset.

This role is ideal for you if you enjoy interacting with people, have good administrative and organisational skills, are proactive, and have a solution-focused approach.

You

The attached job description and person specification gives you guidance about the person we hope will join the team, and the experience and skills that will be useful. We are a small team with big ambitions, and we are passionate about the people we support. We know many of our awardees by name.

You’ll be happy to dive into your independent work, but you will be a team player who can work collaboratively with our small staff and volunteer team to continuously add value to our charitable activities. You will have a genuine interest in our work, along with the curiosity and desire to learn and develop further expertise that enables our small team to deliver big value across all our programmes.

You will be an astute and empathetic communicator, able to build the right rapport with applicants and grant holders, and you will be organised and flexible in your approach. 

Above all, you will have a demonstrable passion for our work. We are particularly keen to receive your application if you have lived or professional experience in the areas of our work. Disability is represented in every tier of our staff, trustee and volunteer teams, and as a Disability Confident committed employer, we will guarantee you an interview if you are disabled and meet the minimum person specification for the role.

Experience in some or all the elements of this role will be helpful, but we are just as interested if you have the right skillset and aptitude for the role, even if you don’t have specific prior experience. If you’re not sure, then please call us for an informal conversation.