Philanthropy Assistant

Job Summary

The salary for this full-time permanent role is circa £28,900 per annum.

It's an exciting time for War Child. We are sector-leading with our heritage, connections, and relationships in the world of music, gaming and events. Our friends are superbly connected and ready to use their networks to help us. With a talented, hard-working team, we deliver amazing, creative fundraising in spades that has a huge capacity to inspire people.

We're looking for a Philanthropy Assistant to join our dynamic and high-performing team. You will be directly supporting the Philanthropy, Trusts & Institutional Funding and Principal Giving fundraising teams through excellent administration and organisation skills, attention to detail, verbal and written communication skills and be part of the team thinking creatively to achieve our strategy goals. In doing so you'll enable War Child to support more of the world's most vulnerable children.

The ideal candidate will be someone eager to learn about fundraising with a keen interest in growing their skills and experience and the enthusiasm to work with supporters to bring about positive change to children's lives.

The team regularly comes together in our London office for collaboration, relationship-building and key meetings. The successful candidate will be expected to attend these in person and support events in London and elsewhere, as required.

Your Role

This role provides administrative and coordination support across War Child's Philanthropy, Trusts & Institutional Funding and Principal Giving fundraising teams. Working with colleagues in these functions, you will help maximise our capacity to maintain and grow relationships with high value and major donors, trusts, foundations and institutional funders.

You will provide high-quality administrative support across a range of projects, campaigns and fundraising activities, enabling managers to effectively steward their portfolios and build strong donor relationships. As part of an ambitious and collaborative team, you'll play an important role in helping secure vital funding to support children affected by war.

Your Responsibilities

Administration:

• Support the team on general administrative tasks including (but not limited to) raising purchase orders, donation processing, income reconciliation, event liaison, venue & catering support, arranging travel and booking internal and external meetings. 
• Take minutes in key meetings and share action points with wider teams.
• Monitor the team info email inbox and direct queries to the relevant team.
• Ensure that all of team documents, reports and event documents are correctly filed on the War Child internal system for easy reference for the Fundraising Team.

Research:

• Lead on the research of new prospects to prepare fundraisers ahead of donor meetings or donors attending events (including creating event biographies).
• Conduct due diligence and ethical screening of prospective donors, partners and funding opportunities in line with War Child's due diligence policy, identifying and assessing reputational, ethical and legal risks.
• Provide administrative and coordination support to the Philanthropy team to help deliver donor stewardship, cultivation and solicitation activities that contribute to achieving income targets, including supporting lapsed donor re-engagement.
• Lead on the research of existing donors, foundation's trustees and institutional donor staff to understand their networks and to maximise their potential across the Fundraising teams.

Communications and Events:

• Support the team to ensure communications with donors and partners are categorised, updated and stored accurately on War Child's database, Salesforce and use Dot Digital/Salesforce to send automated comms. 
• Support on the creation of donor communications which includes (but is not limited to) creating event programmes, event proposal documents, event invitations and donor impact reports/proposals.
• Support the Philanthropy team in particular on event planning and event delivery including supporting the admin tasks for War Child's flagship gala, The Wassail,held in December.
• Represent War Child with commitment and enthusiasm to build new relationships and contacts for War Child, supporting colleagues to ensure that new prospects are followed up and their interest capitalised on.
• Develop strong relationships and maintain excellent communication channels with other teams and departments across War Child.
• Actively participate in regular department and team meetings, contributing to strategy discussion and decisions that will be beneficial to the development of fundraising activities.
• Contribute to creating a culture committed to the safeguarding of children and adults and compliant to WCUK's Integrity & Safeguarding Policies. 
• We are committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace. All staff are expected to actively contribute to this by embedding principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into their day-to-day work, decision-making, and interactions with colleagues, partners, and supporters.

You Are

• Someone with a keen interest in relationship-based fundraising.
• An interest in (or ideally some experience of) supporting public/private events from creation, through planning and to event delivery.
• Take a proactive approach to communication by seeking clarification when needed, escalating risks or challenges promptly, and keeping managers informed where priorities conflict or support is required.
• Able to undertake detail-oriented administrative tasks efficiently and to a high-quality standard.
• Familiar with managing your workload to meet deadlines, manage priorities and hit targets.
• Able to demonstrate strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Able to design clear, engaging and professional presentations, proposals, reports (preferably on Canva).
• Ability to undertake basic analysis of data for research and screening purposes.
• Highly adept at using and managing Outlook calendars and inboxes, including those that are not your own.
• A competent user of Microsoft Office applications, including Excel and PowerPoint.
• A true team player, able to maintain effective and collaborative working partnerships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Able to get up to speed with fundraising regulation and GDPR, and its implications for fundraising policy and practice.
• Able to use or effectively get up to speed with SharePoint and Salesforce quickly.
• Naturally discreet and highly trustworthy.
• Able to attend the London office for meetings and events, and to support events, including some occasional evenings or weekends (time off in lieu provided).

About Us

At War Child we are driven by a single goal – ensuring a safe future for every child affected by war.

Using our 30 years of experience and proven methodologies, we aim to reach children as quickly as possible when conflict breaks out and stay long after the cameras have gone to support them through their recovery. We work with local communities and governments to help protect and educate children, and support them to heal and learn, for a safer, brighter future.

We understand children’s needs, respect and stand up for their rights, and put them at the centre of everything we do – because one child caught up in conflict is one child too many.

Every day, our local teams are in communities and in refugee camps creating safe spaces for children to play, learn and access psychological support, and we specialise in responding rapidly to emergency crisis situations to deliver immediate and critical care impartially to help to those who need us most, when they need us most.

Because no child should be part of war. Ever.

Our Values

• Bold:We use our passion and creativity to deliver high quality evidence-based work designed to maximise our beneficial impact for children in conflict.
• Accountable to children:Children can rely on us to respond to their voices and to treat them with respect and dignity.
• Anti-racism:Anti-racism is not merely a belief. It includes actions that we mainstream throughout our work to change and challenge policies and behaviours that perpetuate racism.
• Transparent:We expect to be held to account by our supporters and participants and we respond with openness and honesty.
• Supportive of each other:We support each other to achieve ambitious goals and be the best we can be. We are honest and open, sharing our successes & confronting our challenges.

Our Benefits

• Flexible working- we recognise the considerable benefits that flexible working can bring and are happy to discuss any possible flexible working options with our employees from hiring. For most roles, the following types of flexibility are usually possible: flexible hours, occasional working from home and compressed hours.
• Annual leave– 28 days per year (full-time) rising to 33 days with service, plus bank holidays
• Pension- all eligible employees automatically enrolled into a Group Personal Pension Plan with a 5% employer contribution, with minimum employee contribution on a salary sacrifice basis. This increases to 6% after one year's service.
• Family leave– we offer enhanced Maternity, Partner/Co-Parent/Paternity Leave, Adoption & Shared Parental Leave
• Health & wellbeing- employees may take advantage of a healthcare cash plan and a range of wellbeing initiatives and training. In addition, all employees have access to free, confidential one-to-one wellbeing consultations with trained counsellors.
• Learning & development- dedicated to the investment in learning and continuing professional development for all our employees
• Workplace Nursery Benefit– employees make tax and NI savings on nursery costs for children up to the age of 5
• Flexible public holidays- up to two standard UK public holidays can be exchanged for those that have cultural or religious significance.
• Voluntary contributions can be made through payroll allowing employees to claim back on a range of cancer treatments.Cancer Cover:
• GP 24/7 Helpline:A GP helpline is be available to all UK employees providing access to a qualified GP, 24/7 via a telephone or webcam consultation, and offers diagnosis, advice and reassurance on a range of medical matters, as well as authorisation of private electronic prescriptions.
• Welcome Bag for new starters:A War Child Tote bag, War Child T-shirt and some other practical things to welcome new colleagues to War Child.
• Discounts on War Child Merchandise: 25% discount on full price War Child merchandise, available to all employees, sold through Everpress.
• Range of flexible benefits such a Cycle to Work scheme and season ticket loans.

Flexible Working

We positively support flexible working arrangements. These currently include: office working, homeworking, part-time hours, compressed hours, flexi-time, flexi-place (hybrid working) and job shares. We would be happy to discuss individual flexible working requests during the interview process.

How to Apply

• To apply, simply submit an application through our Current Vacancies page and attach a copy of your CV.
• On occasion, we might close a vacancy early due to a high number of applications being received. Interested candidates are encouraged to submit their application as early as possible.
• If you have any questions about reasonable adjustments before or during your application, we welcome the opportunity to talk about what we can do to fairly adapt our process for you. Please share what you’re comfortable with to help us put the right support in place, by emailing careers@warchild.org.uk. Anything you tell us will be kept completely confidential by our HR team.
• We are unable to provide sponsorship for this post. In order to apply, you must be able to demonstrate your eligibility to work in the country where this role is based.

Safeguarding

Our work with children and at-risk adults to ensure their safety is our top priority. We are committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults in all aspects of our work. We maintain a zero-tolerance policy for any behavior or practices that put children and/or vulnerable adults at risk of abuse or harm.

Successful applicants will be required to comply with and sign our Safeguarding Policy, Code of Conduct, and PSEAH Policy. You can find the Safeguarding and Integrity policies here:https://warchild.sharepoint.com/sites/Integrity

Diversity and Inclusion

We value diversity and inclusion and are committed to ensuring that all our people and job applicants are treated fairly, irrespective of where, what or whom they were born, or of other characteristics. We want to offer a safe and inclusive workplace where all our people, especially those who are currently marginalised or underrepresented, can be themselves at work. You can read our Diversity and Inclusion policy on our website, and if you have any questions about our commitment to diversity and inclusion do get in touch: https://www.warchild.org.uk/our-work/policies-and-reports/diversity-and-inclusion

Pre-employment Checks

Employment with War Child will be subject to the following checks prior to your start date:

• a satisfactory police record check to include a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and/or an International/National Criminal Record Check
• a clear vetting and Due Diligence check
• receipt of two professional satisfactory references