Major Gifts Fundraiser

JOB DESCRIPTION
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About us:
We are a charity ending the abuse of animals raised for food by influencing the policies of the world's biggest companies, demanding legislation, and empowering others to take action.
We're a mission-driven, energetic team focused on problem-solving and effective teamwork, and have grown significantly over the last few years.
Thanks to our effectiveness, we have been named Top Charity by the independent evaluator Animal Charity Evaluators for every rating period since 2012.
We are an equal-opportunity employer. We are committed to furthering equity and inclusion, and we value diversity. We seek people from a wide range of backgrounds who will bring a fresh perspective to the team, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger.
We make employment decisions by matching our organisational needs with the skills and experience of candidates, irrespective of race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, neurodiversity, age, or veteran status.
​We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer, demonstrating our commitment to recruiting, retaining, and supporting disabled people and people with health conditions, based on their skills and talent.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding accessibility, please contact us via our website and we will be happy to discuss, via email or telephone, reasonable adjustments that you may require throughout the process.
The position:
We are seeking a creative, collaborative and effective fundraiser to drive long-lasting improvements for millions of farmed animals.
This is an exciting time to join a growing organisation, with ambitious plans to become more self-sufficient and financially stable for the long-term. You can be part of our Development Team helping to make this happen.
You’ll manage a portfolio of donors, have the opportunity to develop new relationships and shape our income now, and for the future.
By raising valuable funds and securing major gifts from high net worth individuals, you can make sure that our work continues to have long-lasting impacts - ending cages for egg-laying hens, convincing corporates to commit to improving chicken welfare in their supply chains, challenging the Government over the use of fast-growing breeds of chicken, and working to secure the first legislation to protect farmed fishes.
Through your work you will also have the opportunity to educate and inform our supporters, connecting them to our cause and creating greater awareness about the suffering of farmed animals.
Salary:
Starting Salary of £35,870 or £39,457 for Inner London Weighting.
Hours:
This is a full time position of 37.5 hours per week over Monday to Friday.
From 1st July 2024 we are piloting a four day working week across the whole of the UK organisation. This pilot is planned to run for 12 months, at which point a decision will be made by our Board of Trustees as to whether this will become permanent. Success of the trial relies on the organisation being able to achieve the same or improved level of impact in four working days as five, with staff experiencing either the same or improved levels of wellbeing.
During the four day week pilot, working hours for this position will be reduced to 30 hours per week, spanning Monday to Thursday, with no reduction in salary. This will be a temporary change to the contractual terms with the successful candidate. The appointed person must be prepared to increase their working hours to 37.5 hours per week if a return to a five-day working week is decided.
Who you are:
We are looking for someone who can, through compelling and inspiring writing and communication, engage donors and potential funders in a variety of different formats, whether that’s email updates, thanking them for their support, or drafting a funding proposal. Ultimately, you will need to be able to bring them closer to our work, so that they can understand their individual contribution and the impact their donations can have, and are more likely to take action as a result.
You will also need to be able to build strong relationships, with the ability to understand the motivations of our donors, demonstrate the impact of our work, spot opportunities to engage them, and ask for their financial support at the right time.
Many of our donors come from the Effective Altruism (EA) community, so having an understanding of this community and how to engage it will be helpful. You will help to grow our supporters within the space, raising our profile and spotting opportunities to develop relationships with prospective new donors and funders.
Home-based, you will enjoy collaborating and working independently. As a self-starter, you are able to work autonomously and use your initiative to solve problems and see projects through from start-to-end. You’ll thrive on a varied and interesting mix of tasks and projects.
You’ll keep good records and understand the importance of clean and up to date supporter and donation data in creating efficient systems and processes.
We foster an environment of feedback, development and learning at our organisation. You’ll be someone that values receiving feedback, is able to assess your own performance, and has a desire to want to learn, develop and improve as an individual.
Prior experience of major donor fundraising is beneficial, whilst knowledge and understanding of trusts and grants fundraising would also be helpful. However, we are also keen to hear from you if you have relevant transferable skills and are looking to transition into this exciting area.
We’re looking for the right person, committed to the work we do at our organisation, with values that align with our own, and with the right skills and attitude - an exceptional and confident relationship builder and strong communicator.
We will provide relevant learning and development opportunities, tailored to your experience and personal needs, which could include in-house training, external training and fundraising events and conferences.
Be part of our mission to end the abuse of animals raised for food.
Primary Duties:
Thanking and stewarding some of our key major donors - acting as a direct point of contact for their queries and questions, keeping them updated with our work, thanking them for their support and donations, building strong, long-term relationships, and developing them as prospects or donors to elicit further gifts, through regular email, telephone and face-to-face contact, thank you cards, networking, written updates, online and face-to-face meetings, and other feedback as appropriate.
Creating and submitting funding asks to secure funding and achieve your own fundraising targets and those of the wider organisation, with a focus on securing multi-year funding. This will include creating cases for support and funding briefs for specific projects, working with the Programs Team to pull together all relevant information, as well as completing bespoke funding proposals. You will also need to be able to identify opportunities, know when is the right time to make an ask and what type of ask it should be, whether a one-off gift, multi-year funding, unrestricted or for a specific project, or match funding to help leverage a specific campaign or appeal.
Coordinating our funding pipeline - managing and monitoring what stages our major givers are at in their cultivation journey, tracking details of funding applications/asks made, managing deadlines for applications and monitoring reports, tracking and reconciling donations and providing receipts, securing relevant funding agreements, and capturing the motivations, giving history and details of interactions of our donors.
Leading on the development of our quarterly newsletter - a document designed as a key engagement tool specifically for our major gifts audience, to keep them up to date on our latest news, victories and forthcoming plans.
Mapping out and developing our major donor programme for the next twelve months and beyond - planning a calendar of content and touch points to further cultivate and steward our key donors, such as exclusive webinars, networking meet-ups or larger fundraising events.