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Lead Funding Manager (Creative, Confident Communities), PROSPECTUS
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Our client is one of the UK's leading independent funders, committed to improving our natural world, securing a fairer future and strengthening the bonds within communities. Each year, the Foundation distributes around £50 million in grants and makes social and impact investments that help organisations create lasting social and environmental change.
Its strategy focuses on three interdependent aims: Our Natural World, A Fairer Future and Creative, Confident Communities. Alongside funding, the foundation uses its influence, convenes and brokers alliances, and commissions research to drive systemic change and maximise impact.
Prospectus is delighted to be partnering with the foundation to recruit a Lead Funding Manager for its Creative, Confident Communities team. This is a full-time role (0.8 FTE considered) and a rare opportunity to play a leading role in shaping place-based change across the UK.
Creative, Confident Communities seeks to strengthen the social, cultural and economic fabric of places by supporting local people to lead change themselves. The programme has three priorities: ensuring communities have the power to influence decisions that affect them, helping local economies work better for local people, and enabling culture and creativity to build thriving communities.
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The role
Reporting to the Director of Creative, Confident Communities, you will provide strategic leadership for the foundation's Community-Led Arts and Creativity priority. You will lead the development and delivery of funding strategies, manage a portfolio of significant grants, assess high-value and strategically important proposals, and build influential relationships across the sector.
This is a role for someone who wants to do more than fund good work. You will identify opportunities for change, convene partners, commission learning and research, and help shape the Foundation's response to emerging opportunities and challenges within the community-led arts and culture sector. As a visible ambassador for the foundation, you will represent the Foundation across networks, partnerships and sector forums, helping to advance its mission and influence. Work will include resourcing community-led activity that gives local people agency through community co-design, decision-making and leadership. The role will also work with others to ensure local authority cultural strategies are shaped by local people and to catalyse opportunities from them.
The culture at the foundation is collaborative, ambitious and deeply values-driven. You will join a supportive team that encourages curiosity, learning and shared leadership.
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The person
We are seeking an experienced and strategic funding professional with a strong understanding of community-led arts, creativity and place-based approaches. You may have gained this expertise within a funder, charitable trust, community organisation, local authority or wider voluntary sector environment. Experience of leading impactful work in the arts and cultural sector, community development and strategic design experience will be important.
You will bring excellent judgement, strong analytical skills and the ability to assess complex organisational and financial information with confidence. An accomplished relationship builder, you will be comfortable convening diverse stakeholders, influencing at a senior level and turning insight into action.
Most importantly, you will be motivated by the foundation's mission and share its commitment to social justice, equity and community-led change. This is an exceptional opportunity to make a tangible contribution to one of the UK's most influential foundations and help shape stronger, more creative and more confident communities across the UK.
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