The Youth Endowment Fund

Assistant Director of Public Affairs and Partnerships

Reports to: Director of Change, with significant engagement with Director of

Public Affairs and Comms and CEO

Salary: £75,500 per annum

Location:  Central London or remote

Contract: 2-year fixed term – potential to extend. Open to 0.8 FTE for the right

candidate
Closing date: Friday 26th September by 12pm

About the Youth Endowment Fund

We’re here to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence.

We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this

knowledge into practice.

Last year, 244 people in England and Wales tragically died after being assaulted

with a knife. Of these, 32 were children. Every child captured in these numbers is

an important member of our community and society has a duty to protect them.

Even when violence doesn’t strike directly, we know that the fear of violence has a

terrible effect on children’s lives.

The Youth Endowment Fund exists to try and permanently change things. To

succeed, we must build an exceptional body of knowledge about violence

affecting young people and how we reduce it. This knowledge has to be both

rigorous and highly relevant to those making decisions about how to support

vulnerable young people. We need to find out what works and what doesn’t

through evidence synthesis, data analysis and qualitative research into children’s

lives. We need to convert this into highly accessible content on what works, how

delivery organisations need to change their practice and how the systems they

operate in need to be reformed. We then need to work with the right people that

can make change happen, across systems, policies and practice, to have a real

impact on reducing violence affecting children’s lives.

We can’t do this alone, we have to build and maintain brilliant partnerships across

government, with other funders and with wider society. We are looking for an

exceptional individual to lead on this work. We also need to have an eye for the

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future. Our present endowment must be spent down by April 2029. We need

someone who can lead on planning for the future.

Key responsibilities

You ensure that we:
•  Are ready for the future: Born with a ten-year endowment, the YEF has

become the leading authoritative voice on how to reduce violence affecting
children. We must spend down this endowment by April 2029, so need to start

thinking about after this date. You will lead on ensuring we have a great plan
for post 2029. You will spot the best opportunities, assess them and, over time,

take them. This includes both building great external relationships and also

ensuring there’s a clearly articulated, inspiring narrative – filled with facts,

examples and case studies - of what has been delivered to date and what

needs to happen between 2029 and 2039 to double down on our mission. To

do this, you will orchestrate the expertise and knowledge of colleagues across

the organisation – ensuring that what you need comes together perfectly.
•  Build and maintain great relationships across government: We have an
increasingly large number of relationships across government – providing

advice and support on what works to prevent violence. You will be ready to

offer advice to colleagues on those relationships where needed. You will build

new relationships and maintain them where they are needed so we are ready

for the future. You will be really well organised too ensuring that internal

colleagues know which relationships they own and making sure that key

regular meetings are in place. We have a simple process that tracks these

relationships; you will make this process work well for us – with minimum

bureaucracy and maximum effectiveness. You will also provide help and

advice and coaching as YEF colleagues think through how best to get system

changes to happen that will ultimately reduce violence.

•  Build great relationships with other organisations that will be key to the

future: As the lead organisation on reducing violence affecting young people,

we increasingly receive and see a host of opportunities to partner with other

organisations including funders on projects, co-funding and research. You will

support this work – leading on relationships that are essential in making us

ready for the future. You will spot the opportunity, build relationships, bring in

other YEF colleagues, pull together key information, write brilliant documents

where needed, win others over. In short, you will make great things happen.

As a senior member of staff in the organisation you also:

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•  Lead on culture: Build and maintain a culture where it is natural to perform

well and support colleagues brilliantly.

•  Deliver on strategy: Contribute to setting the strategy, delivering results,

and building and modelling the culture that we need to succeed.

About you

You are this sort of person:
•  You make things happen. You’re organised, delivery-focused, and produce

high-quality work, even under pressure. You work independently and to a high

standard. You are quick at really understanding something so you can make

good decisions quite fast. You put plans together and make them happen.

Wherever you work, people think of you as someone who makes things

happen. You do it in a generous, kind way that means people are feel

delighted to see you succeeding, never trampled upon.

•  You like bringing order and clarity to a big project that involves lots of

people. You are at home bringing order to a big project: working out who is

going to do what by when, having a regular steering group to ensure progress,

keeping everyone on side and delivering a great result at the end.

•  You understand how government works – as in really understand. You

understand the nuance of how decisions are made within government. You

understand that there is no such thing as ‘the department’s position’ (instead

there are different views competing) and that while some decisions are very

rational, some are more about personalities and politics. You find the process

of how decisions get made within government departments, and with Number

10 and the Treasury, fascinating.

•  You are fantastic at spotting how to get something done in Whitehall or
Westminster. You are really good at thinking about how to make change
happen. To some, Westminster and Whitehall can seem like a blob but you are

brilliant at spotting how to make change happen there. You can think through

the intricacies of who to get onside, who to get advice from, who to persuade

and how to get the job done. You have a track record of doing this.

•  You write really well. The idea of writing one or two pivotally important longer

documents (30-40 pages) for the organisation that makes the case for

something and pulls in content from lots of colleagues, synthesising and

making it all fit together sounds interesting. You know – from experience – that

you would be good at it.

•  You win people over. People tend to warm to you and respect you. You easily
build good relationships with both very senior and very junior people. You can

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be at ease talking to a senior politician or a 15 year old. It is important to you to

be humble. You acknowledge how much you don't know as well as how much

you do.

•  You are great at building lasting partnerships with other organisations. You

have experience of building partnerships or collaborations with other

organisations, winning them over, doing conflict well when you need to,

communicating clearly so that the work gets done and people feel as good as

possible about it.

•  You are a team player. You work brilliantly in a team. You are not motivated by
being the individual winner. You want the team as a whole to succeed. You

enjoy coaching other people so that they perform excellently in a meeting. You

are not possessive of your contacts. You don’t care who gets the credit as long

as things get done. You like the idea of being part of a small, well-motivated

team and are ok with the downside of this – that we don’t have a lot of junior

admin staff to do the jobs we like less.

•  You think and communicate really well from the big picture to practical

reality. You’re a strategic thinker who can see the big picture without losing

sight of the detail.  You find it quite easy to summarise in a few sentences, a

few pages or a few words a complex argument or case. Whether speaking or

writing, you break down complicated concepts in ways that make sense to

different audiences – without oversimplifying. You bring clarity where others

bring jargon.

•  You care about our mission. You can be easily motivated to do work to

prevent violence. This is something that matters to you. You believe in getting

people to do things that are most likely to save lives, rather than just things

that sound good.

•  You’re committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Not just in theory – but

in how you work, who you listen to, and what you prioritise.

While it’s not a criterion, we are especially interested to hear from applicants who

have lived experience of violence affecting young people.

It’s also important to us that the people we hire do not discriminate. We believe in

being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications

are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage

or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual

orientation, transgender status or social economic background.

Secondments

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We are open to candidates that would prefer to join us on a 2-year secondment

or career break. Secondment candidate should ensure that their current

organisation is in support of this in principle, all candidates will go through the full

interview process. Candidates should state clearly in their covering letter if they

would like to join us as secondee.

Hybrid Working Details

The office is based in Central London. Those living in and around London are

expected to be in the office for a minimum of 2 days per week. If you live outside

of London and work remotely, you’ll be expected to work from the London office 2

days per month.

As part of our commitment to flexible working we will consider a range of options

for the successful applicant. All options can be discussed at the interview stage.

To Apply

To apply, please send a CV and cover letter, and complete the monitoring form
click on "Apply for this" button by Friday 26th September 2025.

When applying for this role, please ensure that your cover letter can answer,

within a maximum of 1000 words (there is no need to be this long though) the

following questions:

1.  Tell us in two paragraphs about something you made happen. We are keen

to find someone who is good at be a self-starter, organised and finding the

way to make something happen. Tell us what you were trying to get done,

how you organised the task and how you made it happen.

2.  Summarise in one or two paragraphs your experience of working with or in

central government. We are keen to find someone who knows how

decisions are made in government and has seen them being made.

3.  Tell in two paragraphs about someone or an organisation you won over or

built a good relationship with. Tell us how you went about it. We are keen to

find someone who quite easily builds good relationships with other

organisations.

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Interview Process

This will be a two-stage interview process. The first stage interviews will take place
in the week commencing 13th October 2025. Second stage interviews are
currently scheduled for the week commencing 20th October 2025
PLEASE NOTE: We do not sponsor work permits and you will be required to provide

proof of your eligibility to work in the UK.

Benefits Include

•  £1,000 professional development budget annually
•  28 days holiday – 3 of which are taken between Christmas and New Years -

plus Bank Holidays

•  Employee Assistance Programme – 24hr phone line for free confidential

support

•  Volunteering days - 4 half days per year
•  Death in service - 4 times annual salary
•  Flexible hours. Core office hours 10am – 4pm
•  Financial support including travel and hardship loans
•  Employer contributed pension of 5%.

Personal Data

Your personal data will be shared for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This

includes our HR team, interviewers (who may include other partners in the project

and independent advisors), relevant team managers and our IT service provider if

access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles. We do not share your

data with other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful

and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former

employers to obtain references for you. We do not transfer your data outside the

European Economic Area.

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