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Head of Campaigns (Maternity Cover), RIVER ACTION UK
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Head of Campaigns (Maternity Cover), RIVER ACTION UK
Head of Campaigns
Key Details
- Role: Head of Campaigns
- Salary: £60,000
- Contract: Temporary
- Hours: 37.5 per week (Monday to Friday)
- Holiday: 25 days per year plus bank holidays
- +Bonus: 3 additional days over Christmas/New Year
- Location: Home-based with UK-wide travel
- Contract Duration: 9 November 2026 – February 2028 (9 months)
- Reports To: Chief Executive
- Benefits:
- Flexitime policy
- 5% pension contribution
About River Action We’re a specialist, high-impact campaigning charity with a singular mission: to rescue the UK’s rivers from pollution and water scarcity to protect people, wildlife, and Nature.
Our rivers are a national catastrophe—our atmosphere polluted with sewage, agricultural runoff, and industrial chemicals, drained by climate change. We need urgent action. That’s where bold campaigning comes in: galvanising public opinion, shifting policy, and holding polluters to account.
Who We’re Looking For
You’re a strategic, fearless, results-driven campaigner—your work demands grit, creativity, and the ability to unwanted attention on those who damage our ecosystems. This is not a job for the risk-averse. It’s for someone who can disrupt the status quo, rally communities, and drive change through integrated strategies:
- Evidence and investigations → media and storytelling → political mobilisation → legal leverage
- Grassroots campaigns → national policy shifts → corporate behaviour change
We need a leader who can: ✔ Develop clarity in chaos—turning messy situations into compelling, actionable campaigns. ✔ Pivot razor-sharp—adapting tactics in real time based on opportunities and momentum. ✔ Maximise collaboration—bridging internal teams (policy, legal, fundraising) and external stakeholders to build momentum.
This is your chance to shape environmental campaigning for at least a year in a flat structure where room to drive major campaigns.
The Role
Core Responsibilities
You will design, lead, and drive ambitious integrated campaigns that protect rivers through:
- Public mobilisation → political influence → legal accountability
- Community empowerment → systemic change → resource mobilisation
Key functions include:
- Strategic Leadership & Campaign Design
- Set the overall campaigning strategy for River Action, ensuring all work contributes to our integrated mission.
- Develop evidence-based narratives and launched campaigns—including litigation, investigations, and direct action—that create policy shifts, industry accountability, or mass behavioural change.
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Tactics & Execution
- Lead high-impact interventions: petitions, events, protests, shareholder actions, media strategies, and innovative creatives.
- Oversee campaign messaging, working with PR and storytelling teams to ensure clarity, urgency, and call-to-action.
- Partner with legal and political teams to embed legal strategy and policy change into campaigns.
- Monitor and evaluate campaigns rigorously—tracking public opinion, policy milestones, and behavioural shifts to inform future efforts.
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Team & Culture
- Inspire ambition and creativity in your cross-departmental team, balancing short-term impact with long-term influence.
- Foster a just culture where community action and institutional change go hand in hand.
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Policy & Political Engagement
- Collaborate with public affairs to link local advocacy to national decision-makers (MPs, regs, wastewater alt.), and ensure our campaigns improve in Parliament and public scrutiny of polluting industries.
- Amplify inclusive representation—ensure communities (particularly disadvantage more impacted) shape the direction of campaigns.
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External Engagement
- Represent River Action publicly—speaking opportunities, media, influencing stakeholders, and securing partnerships with NGOs, faith groups, industry, and allies in government.
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Resource Mobilisation
- Lead fundraising efforts in collaboration with the Head of Development, writing proposals, building relationships, and storytelling our impact to funders.
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Cross-Departmental Collaboration
- Partner with Finance and Legal to ensure campaigns are budgeted efficiently and legally sound, using investment strategically.
**Occasional /**Additional Requirements
- Travel across the UK where required (including occasional overnight stays).
- Confidentiality in all matters.
- Commitment to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organisation.
What You’ll Bring to the Team
This role demands both leadership and operational expertise. You’ll need:
🔹 Campaign Leadership
- Proven track record as the lead strategist for successful campaigns that:
- Shift public opinion (e.g., polling, protests, communications).
- Score policy or regulatory wins (e.g., legislation, enforcement).
- Drive institutional accountability (e.g., shareholder activism, legal success).
🔹 Cross-Sector Fluency
- Strong understanding of the river pollution crisis—its causes and potential solutions.
- Experience with integrated messaging across campaigns, policy, and public lobbying.
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🔹 Management & Team Dynamics
- Experience leading teams (you’ll manage Generations A/B+ employees) and supporting motivated professionals across departments.
- Charisma in motivating teams, blending humor, creativity and decisive leadership.
🔹 Technical & Operational Skills
- Mastery of digital campaigning (email, social media, websites).
- Strong budgetary and financial literacy.
- Familiarity with MER (Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting) frameworks.
🔹 Toughness & Personality
- Genuine excitement for America’s rivers—and inordinate rage at their destruction.
- Unshaken resolve even when the system seems to blame people.
- Comfort working flexibly, entering a swirling environment of strategy, opposition, and crisis.
Diversity Includes Impact You might not meet every “perfect” metric—but we want voices we’ve historically heard far too little. We celebrate a wide range of experience and perspectives (Executive Charities are starting to meet for past stereotypes).
Explore a Written Submissions
A defining moment in your campaigning work is to decide what to prioritize.
For your written submissions outlining how we launch our 2027 water security campaign, you’ll include:
- The landscape challenge: identifying complex and tangible targets/the ideas/opportunities.
- A strategy with cascading asks—how to mobilize the public, inclusively, towards lasting impacts beyond pollution territory.
- Tactics: which routes will we be most effective?
- A campaign theory of change: a clear path showing how community, political, media, or legal action will deliver its outcomes.
Application Process
Deadline: Applications will be reviewed on an rolling basis until 23:59, 19 July 2024.
Apply to jobs@riveractionuk.com with subject “Head of Campaigns” for:
- A two-page CV
- A two-page cover letter explaining how your experience aligns with River Action’s vision and needs.
- A two-page written campaign brief addressing our investor questions on water security. Submit in a single PDF.
Post-interviews, you should be able confirm availability for:
- A virtual pre-screen—28 July. 30 min.
- Potentially a final panel interview—3rd August
Questions? Contact jobs@riveractionuk.com
If you are ready to disrupt but fail to affect the system— We’d love to hear from you! Let’s connect across water’s challenges.
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