Funding Officer
Welcome
The Community Foundation is one of North East England’s leading charities. Every year we make grants to hundreds of local charities and community organisations through funds set up by our donors. Since we were founded in 1988, we’ve awarded over £190m to benefit people and places across our area – £8.9m of that in 2024-25 alone.
We’re now recruiting for a Funding Officer to join our team as maternity cover for 12 months. We’re looking for someone who has a love for, and strong connection with Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, who shares our passion for the work of small, local charities and who has an enthusiasm for making a difference through charitable giving and philanthropy.
What we do
We support small, local charities and community organisations by growing giving and philanthropy, matching generous people and businesses with our region’s important community causes.
We do this by...
enabling people from all walks of life to set up funds, give collectively or share expertise.
supporting small, local charities and community organisations through grants from our funds and help from our networks.
There are 1,800 community foundations across the globe. We are the most successful in the UK. Over 30 years, we’ve built an endowment of nearly £100 million which ensures our work can benefit communities for generations to come.
We’ve funded Wansbeck Valley Food Bank in south-east Northumberland to provide people with a healthier diet. We’ve supported Southwick Neighbourhood Youth Project in Sunderland to help young people improve their mental health and wellbeing. We’ve backed the Walking With project in North Tyneside to strengthen its work supporting refugees and asylum seekers new to the area.
shining a light on vital issues affecting our area and working with others to tackle them.
building our endowment as a community asset for generations to come.
In 2024-25
1,224 grants totalling £8,417,728 were made 597 organisations and 95 individuals were supported
49% of the total was core funding for
organisations
Average grant size was £7,295
154 grants went to organisations new to us The most supported causes were culture, communities, education and health.
Our values
We seek to make a difference by: sharing our love for North East England and wanting it to thrive; believing in the importance of giving and philanthropy; backing the brilliant work of local charities; championing disadvantaged people and less well supported causes.
We earn the trust of our donors and grantees by:
starting where they are and encouraging their ambitions; being respectful, reliable and responsive; building lifelong relationships; applying sound judgement and knowing our stuff; staying independent and accountable.
We make sure we keep getting better by: sparking off and challenging each other across our organisation; taking personal and collective responsibility; learning from our successes and mistakes; embracing diversity and treating people fairly; having a healthy workplace and positive balance in our lives; taking our work seriously but not ourselves.
What we’re looking for
We need someone with an understanding of social issues and community needs to join our team as a part-time maternity cover for our Funding Officer.
As our Funding Officer, you’ll assess funding requests we receive and make recommendations on those to support. You’ll also carry out grant monitoring and reporting, and help promote our funding to potential recipients. You also manage some of our smaller lighter-touch funds.
We don’t need you to have a degree but we would like you to have some grantmaking experience. You’ll have an understanding of the work of local charities and community organisations. You'll have the skills to assess requests for funding objectively. Your writing will be clear and concise. You’ll be confident working with ICT. You’ll be a team player, able to work under pressure of timescales and competing priorities. And you’ll be strongly committed to your own learning and development.
Like everyone at the Foundation, you will love North East England and want it to thrive. You’ll believe in backing the brilliant work of small charities, and embracing equality and diversity. You’ll be someone who takes individual and collective responsibility, taking your work seriously, but not yourself.
The Foundation strives to be diverse and inclusive and a place where we can all be ourselves. In line with this commitment, and our Board diversity benchmarks, we encourage applications from women, disabled people and Black, Asian, and other minority ethnic groups.
For more information, go to: www.communityfoundation. org.uk/about-us/diversityequity-and-inclusion/
What will your duties and responsibilities be?
Grant-making
• Support the Community Relations and Philanthropy sections by assessing grant applications for funds as agreed.
• Assess a wide range of funding requests by analysing application materials, publicly available data and by following up queries by telephone/email as required.
• Produce clear and concise assessment reports including conclusions about whether a request should be funded based on facts about organisations’ governance, track record, case for support and how well they meet the Foundation’s policies and criteria.
• Complete all the Foundation’s assessment processes and data coding.
• Review monitoring reports sent by grantees and evaluate their success.
• Respond to enquiries from applicants about allocated grants assessments as required.
• Provide advice and information to Foundation colleagues about assigned assessments so they can prepare for fund or panel meetings.
• Maintain understanding of policy issues relevant to the Foundation’s work.
• Support colleagues in researching potential grantees.
• Support events and outreach activities to engage potential grantees.
Funding and Community Knowledge
• Administer smaller/light-touch funds as required.
• Assist with the set up and delivery of new funds and initiatives.
• Support work on specific funding initiatives and partnerships as required.
Funding service improvement
• Support senior staff on research and data analysis around grant programmes and grantee satisfaction to inform improvements.
• In liaison with the operations section, support the development and implementation of new and improved systems and approaches to enable more effective and efficient services for partners, including web portals and online giving mechanisms.
Operations and team working
• Demonstrate the Foundation’s values and support colleagues as part of the Foundation team.
• Contribute to wider Foundation activities and shared responsibilities and undertake other similar duties as required.
• Represent the Community Foundation at events as required.
• Take responsibility for own professional development and learning, seeking and making best use of opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills relevant to the role.
What skills and experience do you need?
Essential skills, knowledge and behaviours
• Ability to assess requests for funding objectively and to agreed standards and procedures.
• Ability to produce clear and concise written copy appropriate for the Foundation’s audiences.
• Understanding of the work of local charities and community organisations.
• Understanding of relevant social issues and community needs.
• Competent with, and enthusiastic about using, a wide range of ICT and operational systems.
• Strong interpersonal skills, enthusiasm and the ability to work well as part of a team including when under pressure of timescales and competing priorities.
• Excellent time management skills and ability to work accurately and efficiently to consistently high standards.
Keen to learn, support others and be involved in developments leading to continuous improvement of Foundation operations.
• Strong commitment to, and ability to demonstrate, the values of the Foundation.
• Demonstrable commitment to learning through formal education and/or professional development.
• Able and willing to work flexibly, and sometimes outside normal office hours.
• Able and willing to travel for work within the region.
Desirable skills, knowledge and behaviours
• Prior experience of assessing funding applications.
Understanding of governance and safeguarding issues for charities and community organisations.
• Experience of using Salesforce.
• Understanding of charitable giving and philanthropy.
• Experience of representing an organisation externally in networks and at events.
Who will you be working with?
We are an independent, registered charity, with an excellent reputation here and across the country. Over 30+ years, we’ve built an endowment fund of over £100 million which gives us strength and means we can finance our operations and ensure our work benefits communities for generations to come. You will report to our Head of Grant Practice and Programmes who oversees our grant making and funding programmes. You will also work closely with the Grant Support Officer and others in the Programmes and Partnerships and Philanthropy sections. But, with 24 people overall, we are an organisation where everyone works together, gets stuck in, takes collective responsibility and strives to make the Foundation better.
What we’ll offer you
Competitive full time equivalent salary of £30,900 (£24,720 pro rata for 28 hours per week)
Workplace pension where we contribute 6% to match your 5%
• 28 days (pro rata) annual leave plus public holidays
• Contribution towards mobile phone costs if used for work.
• Business and travel expenses and access to the Metro scheme
• Life Assurance (Death in service provision)
• Half a day a month paid time off for voluntary work
Family Friendly and carers leave of 5 days paid leave
• Access to free counselling
• Social events and better health at work activities
Full induction and continuing development and learning opportunities, including access to national conferences and networking opportunities
Your normal place of work will be our spacious, modern and accessible office in a beautifullycon verted Victorian chapel in Gosforth , Newcastle upon Tyne. Amenities including : kitchen/staff room, shower and refreshments. There are excellent transport links, bike storage and on site parking . Following satisfactory probation we offer hybrid working which requires the Funding Officer to be in the office for 80% of your working week.
How to apply
We need to understand who you are, what you’d bring and how you’d fit with our values. So, please send us:
• Your CV (no more than 3 A4 pages) including details of two referees.
• a covering statement (no more than 2 A4 pages) saying why you want to work with us and what you’d bring to the role, with clear, practical examples of how your skills and experience meet all the job requirements.
Please send these by email (Word or PDF format) to Dawn Porter dp@communityfoundation.org.uk. Applications that are longer than the maximum length will not be considered. Please also complete our recruitment diversity survey for this role (this is anonymous and used just for monitoring) via this link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PQXD5JS
The recruitment timetable is as follows.
• Deadline for applications: 9am on Monday 17 August 2026
• Shortlisted applications notified by: 12 noon on 24 August 2026
• In-person interviews for shortlisted applicants: 3 September 2026
The appointment will be subject to successful completion of a probationary period. We won’t hold information you give us longer than necessary and it won’t be used for any purpose other than to assess your suitability for the post in line with our data protection policy.
We recruit solely on merit, so we hide applicants’ names and other details that may identify their sex, age, disability, sexual orientation or other characteristics protected under the Equality Act before applications are seen by our panel.
More Information
For more information about us visit www.communityfoundation.org.uk.
Our registered charity number is 700501. Our limited company number is 2273708.
We are also registered with the Fundraising Regulator.