What Are We Looking For?

We are looking for an experienced fundraising, grants, or bid professional who can bring both practical expertise and good judgement to EMMAA.

You should have at least three years' relevant professional experience, ideally including successful grant or funding applications and experience of taking opportunities from initial research through to submission.

We would particularly value experience in one or more of:

• Grant and trust fundraising
• Bid writing or bid management
• Institutional or public-sector funding
• Sport, community, or youth funding
• Charity, CIC, or social-enterprise fundraising
• Corporate foundations or CSR funding

You should be comfortable researching potential funders, assessing eligibility and strategic fit, developing strong cases for support, and working with others to produce clear objectives, outcomes, and budgets.

Just as importantly, we want someone capable of exercising judgement. We do not want to pursue every available grant; we want to identify the opportunities where EMMAA and its programmes have a credible case for support.

You will be working with experienced people from sport, business, medicine, safeguarding, and governance, so the ability to ask good questions, challenge constructively, and translate specialist information into compelling funding propositions will be valuable.

Previous experience of MMA or combat sports is not required. Professional fundraising expertise and an interest in helping a developing national sports organisation build sustainable funding capability are much more important.

Remote

What Will You Be Doing?

We are looking for someone to help establish and lead EMMAA's grants and institutional funding activity.

Key priorities will include:

• Researching and identifying suitable grants, trusts, foundations, and public or institutional funding opportunities.
• Building and maintaining a prioritised funding pipeline and application calendar.
• Assessing opportunities for eligibility, strategic fit, likelihood of success, and the resources required to pursue them.
• Leading or supporting the preparation and submission of high-quality funding applications and bids.
• Working with EMMAA leads to turn existing programmes and new ideas into clear, evidence-based funding propositions with appropriate outcomes, budgets, and measures of impact.
• Developing reusable organisational information, evidence, and supporting material for future applications.
• Helping establish straightforward systems for recording applications, decisions, awards, reporting requirements, and funder relationships.

We have already begun developing our funding strategy and identifying potential propositions, including regional MMA development and talent pathways, widening access and opportunity for young athletes, and athlete welfare and safety initiatives. The successful volunteer will therefore not be starting with a blank sheet of paper.

We are particularly looking for someone who can bring professional judgement to the process — including being willing to tell us when an opportunity is not worth pursuing.

The role will work directly with EMMAA's President, with access to relevant board members, coaches, and specialist leads where information or expertise is required.