The Church of England
Gifts in Wills Manager
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Gifts in Wills Manager
Job Description
About the Giving Directorate and Net Zero Carbon Programme
The Church of England ministers to every community in England, and our mission and ministry is sustained and expanded through a culture of generous giving.
The Giving Directorate plays a vital role in equipping dioceses, parishes, and clergy with the tools and confidence to encourage generosity. Through strategic leadership, innovative resources, and collaborative partnerships, we aim to inspire giving that enables the Church to flourish in every community. We lead major funded projects that strengthen giving across the Church, ensuring that generosity is central to mission and ministry.
The Giving Directorate has four teams: Innovation & Insight (leading on innovations, the parish share project, data analysis and marketing); Parish Giving Scheme (giving mechanisms and technology); NZC Fundraising (including policy, philanthropy and gifts in wills) and Learning & Development (delivering training, mentoring, and equipping clergy and diocesan giving advisors, national and regional conferences, and developing online learning resources for parishes).
You will sit within the Net Zero Carbon Fundraising team which leads the strategy to coordinate and support the plans being developed by our dioceses, churches, cathedrals, schools, and departments to secure the significant additional funding needed to decarbonise the Church of England.
What You’ll Be Doing
Legacies have historically played a transformative role for the Church of England – sustaining parish ministry, helping deliver the 30,000+ community projects run by parishes every year, conserving historic buildings and enabling important work for the future, including Net Zero Carbon projects. There is significant untapped potential for legacy giving to make an even bigger difference to our work, but awareness is uneven, and local church leaders often lack the training and resources to talk confidently about gifts in wills.
As the Gifts in Wills Manager, you will lead an ambitious new legacy programme to significantly expand the support and resources available for all parts of the Church of England to effectively encourage legacy giving. This will include creating new legacy giving resources that can be used by parishes, cathedrals and Dioceses as well as new training for local parish volunteers, clergy and senior leaders.
Gifts in wills have the potential for significantly enhancing the work of the church in caring for God’s creation, being the culmination of a person’s lifetime of commitment and care for the church and God’s creation. The role will include specifically looking to develop NZC cases for support as a way to encourage gifts in wills, through linking the ongoing and perpetual care of God’s creation with the long term impact of gifts in wills.
Through your work you will create a culture shift where legacy giving is demystified to become a natural part of Christian discipleship. The increased number and generosity of legacy gifts pledged and received will make a long-lasting impact on the financial ability of parishes, cathedrals, and dioceses to fund their ministry and social impact in the communities they serve.
Key Relationships: Head of Net Zero Carbon Fundraising, Deputy Director (Learning and Development), Regional Giving Advisors, Head of Resources & Insights, Diocesan Giving Advisors, NCIs Legal Team, Farewill, Christian Aid.
This is a fixed-term contract role for three years, and interviews will take place on 08 June 2026.
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We are hosting a drop-in where you can ask any questions that you may have about the role. This will be held on 28th May 2026 13:00-13:45pm. To register for this drop-in, please follow this link:
Responsibilities
Create and implement a three-year legacy strategy which includes net zero carbon cases for support to substantially grow legacy giving across all levels of the Church of England including local parishes, regional Dioceses, and cathedrals. Provide parishes, cathedrals and dioceses with the tools, training, and confidence to promote legacy giving, including creating new legacy marketing and administration resources, free will services, and tailored training for local volunteers, clergy and senior leadership. Lead and implement a national PR and digital comms campaign to support the national roll out of the legacy giving strategy in collaboration with the Directorate’s Marketing Manager including collating stories about the impact that legacy gifts have in our churches and the communities they support. Pilot in-memory giving in local churches Working with the National Giving Data Analyst, build data dashboards and financial forecasting to monitor impact and advocate for continued support and investment in legacy fundraising. Monitor analysis and reports within the legacy sector to identify benchmarking, forecasts and trends. Be a national point of contact for parishes, cathedrals, Dioceses and, on occasion, executors for legacy giving queries – covering both legacy marketing and administration. Represent the Church of England as a knowledgeable and experienced specialist on legacy fundraising in the Religious Sector with other denominations, Christian focused charities, other charities and the Chartered Institute of Fundraising.
Your job description is intended to reflect your main tasks and areas of work, but is not exhaustive. Changes may occur over time and you will be expected to agree any reasonable changes to your job description that are commensurate with your banding and in line with the general nature of your post. You will be consulted about any changes to your job description before these are implemented.
Qualifications
The Church of England is for everyone and we want to reflect the diversity of the community the Church serves across the whole country. Therefore, while of course we welcome all applications from interested and suitably experienced people, we would particularly welcome applicants from UK Minoritised Ethnicities (UKME)/Global Majority Heritage (GMH) and other under-represented groups.
Essential
Knowledge/Experience:
Experience of running a successful gifts in wills giving programme. Strong understanding of people’s motivations for making gifts in their wills and the ability to apply these principles to the Church of England context. Experience in creating gifts for wills marketing materials. Experience creating training materials and effectively delivering training, ideally relating to gifts in wills fundraising. Experience in managing a fundraising communications campaign, ideally relating to gifts in wills fundraising. Experience delivering a medium – long term strategy. Experience in legacy administration.
Skills & Abilities
Excellent communication skills in person, in writing and online. Strong influencing skills with the ability to build effective relationships with volunteers, clergy and those with limited or no experience of legacy fundraising as well as senior leaders. Highly organised with excellent project management skills. Creativity and problem-solving skills to make the most of opportunities and overcome challenges Tact and appreciation of the sensitives around legacy giving. An ethical approach, with practice that is entirely consistent with the Christian faith and abides by all relevant legislation (including the Fundraising Regulator Code of Fundraising Practice). Ability to articulate how legacy giving is a natural outworking of the Christian faith and an expression of Christian discipleship. Very strong self-motivator and initiator as the job requires some independent working. Ability to work collaboratively across a diverse and geographically dispersed organisation. Ability to travel, on occasion, for work purposes across England.
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Qualifications & Training
We expect to see evidence of continuing professional development relating to legacy fundraising. This could be evidenced through training courses, qualifications, relevant sector events.
Desirable
A professional qualification or training in legacy marketing and/or administration. Experience of working with volunteers. Understanding of the Church of England’s structures. Experience of working within a large and complex organisation. Experience of legacy administration
About Us
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About The NCIs
The National Church Institutions comprises a wide variety of teams, professions and functions that support the mission and ministries of the Church of England in its vision to be a church, centred on Jesus Christ, for the whole nation - a church that is simpler, humbler, bolder.
We Include. You Belong.
Our Belonging and Inclusion Strategy aims for everyone in the National Church Institutions (NCIs) to feel that they belong, and are valued for who they are and what they contribute. Together, our people contribute in different ways towards our common purpose, whichever NCI they work in and whatever their background.
Living out our values in all that we do, we:
Strive for Excellence Show Compassion Respect others Collaborate Act with Integrity
We believe our commitment to belonging and inclusion fuels our progress and drives us forward. The NCIs are a safe, inclusive workplace for people of all backgrounds and walks of life. We welcome applications from people of all faiths and of no faith. We want to encourage applications from a diverse group of people who share our values. Even if you have never thought about working for us before, if you have the skills and experience we’re looking for then we would like to hear from you.
Use of AI in your application
We appreciate that you may want to use AI tools to help you with your application. We're happy for you to use AI to come up with ideas and help structure your thoughts, but you shouldn't use AI to fabricate information or write your whole application for you. One of our values is integrity, and although we want you to demonstrate your best self, we don't want an AI-generated persona. If you simply copy and paste AI-generated content into your application, this will reduce your chances of success.
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