Fundraising Officer

This is an opportunity for a motivated and enthusiastic individual to work in our fantastic, skilled Fundraising Team on exciting and ambitious campaigns. The role offers many opportunities to develop fundraising skills and experience.

About CAT

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) is an internationally renowned environmental charity, a world-leading eco centre, and one of the foremost providers of postgraduate environmental education in the UK, based near Machynlleth in Mid Wales.

CAT provides inspiration, education and training in solutions to the climate and biodiversity emergency.

Key activities include a visitor centre where people can see solutions in action, residential, in-person and online short courses and events, vocational training, and postgraduate degrees in a wide range of sustainability-related topics.

Our Zero Carbon Britain team publishes research and works directly with councils, communities and other organisations to help transform complex economic, social and political systems.

Job Details

• Ref: FOF241212
• Salary: £23,405 p.a.*
• Hours: Full-time: 37.5 hours per week.
• Responsible to: Fundraising Manager
• Responsible for: Supervision of volunteers
• Fixed term – 6 months with a possibility of extension
• Location: Flexible with regular visits to the CAT eco centre near Machynlleth
• Working Days: Usually Monday to Friday, core hours are from 10am to 4pm. Occasional weekend and evening working.
• Closing date for applications: 9am 13 Janaury 2025
• Interview to be held: Week commencing 20 Janaury 2025 (on site)
• Expected start date: As soon as possible

*CAT offers a generous annual leave allowance of 25 days p.a., plus bank holidays (usually 9-10 days), plus additional allowance at Christmas (usually 3 days), plus 1 extra day for every year worked (up to 5 days).

CAT also offers an attractive package of employee benefits, including:

• a free cooked lunch and free hot drinks from the café whenever working from the CAT eco centre
• 40% discount on retail goods purchased from CAT
• Opportunities for CPD training, qualifications & professional memberships to be funded by CAT
• Opportunity to take 2 CAT short courses per year free-of-charge
• the opportunity to purchase additional holiday days
• a ‘Cycle to Work’ scheme (planned)
• 5% pension contribution
• generous maternity and paternity entitlement and Death In Service benefit
• 2 hours per month for general health & wellbeing & 2 hours per month for Welsh language tuition.

COVID-19 Considerations:

Staff are working remotely as much as possible, subject to individual roles. Working arrangements for staff comply with all current applicable COVID-19 guidance and are updated as and when the guidance changes.

Overview of Role

This is an opportunity for a motivated and enthusiastic individual to work in our fantastic, skilled Fundraising Team on exciting and ambitious campaigns. The role offers many opportunities to develop fundraising skills and experience.

CAT’s Fundraising Team is responsible for raising vital funds for CAT’s core and project work from individuals, trusts and foundations, statutory bodies and companies. This is essential for CAT to fulfill its charitable mission – to inform, inspire and enable people to take action for a sustainable future. The post-holder will play an essential role within this team, helping to steward, inspire and engage current and potential supporters and members.

Supporter care and fundraising co-ordination: The post-holder will be accountable for establishing stronger and more effective relationships with supporters and leads. They will help maintain and increase levels of engagement through consistent, outstanding supporter care (customer service) and efficient coordination of communications (including outbound mail, email and phone).

Working with data: The post-holder will also play a crucial administrative role, including regularly collecting, processing and recording income for the team and thanking supporters. They will complete various important business controls and processes on a regular basis, so that financial and supporter data can be accurately and appropriately tracked. These aspects of the role provide the postholder with valuable opportunities to develop their skills and experience with using MS Excel and databases, with CAT supporting them to achieve relevant CPD training as required.

Gaining other fundraising/marketing experience: An important and exciting aspect of the role is to support the team’s income generation activities in a variety of ways. The nature of this work may be tailored, to some extent, to the abilities and interests of the post-holder. For instance, there may be opportunities to develop their skills in copywriting, writing applications for funding from charitable trusts, managing creative design work, data analysis, community fundraising, digital fundraising, major donor and legacy fundraising, events fundraising, and corporate partnerships.

The post-holder is likely to work closely and share many of the below responsibilities with another Fundraising Officer as well as other colleagues.

Main Responsibilities

To provide supporter care services:

• To be the first point of contact for individual Giving and Membership related queries (by phone, email and post) and to respond to these or escalate to line-manager as appropriate.

To develop and support fundraising projects and programmes

• To write fundraising letters and emails and arrange in-house mailings if required.
• To help organize and run the annual CAT Conference, regular free webinars and other events if required.
• To make applications for funding from trusts and foundations and produce regular reports on any projects funded as a result, if required.
• To help generate new sources of income and manage existing relationships and programmes eg. through community fundraising, corporate partnerships, lead generation, digital fundraising, major donor and legacy fundraising and other channels if required.
• To help produce insightful, high-quality research on current and prospective donors from trusted sources and in line with GDPR, if required.
• To conduct other research within specified timeframes and tailor findings for a variety of purposes and audiences, if required.

To process data and manage communications:

• To collect and process enquiries, payments and cancellations by card, Paypal, cheque, Direct Debit and other methods by phone, online or on paper.
• To export, import, and maintain data on relevant CAT databases and software as appropriate, both manually and through batch processing; to ensure filing is kept up to date; and to ensure data is stored and archived accurately and in accordance to GDPR.
• To carry out and record individual and bulk mail, email and phone communications, including thanking and welcoming supporters and members as well as tailoring bespoke communications where appropriate.
• To carry out and manage communications, eg. email, phone and post, including mailmerges, for welcome, stewardship, membership renewal and other fundraising needs.
• To submit Gift Aid claims to HMRC and update database records accordingly
• To process CAF, Stewardship, GAYE, Standing Order, JustGiving, collection box and other income, and managing relevant communications and maintaining records as appropriate.

To undertake other duties:

• To provide support for creative, analysis, insight and evaluation if required
• To respond to requests from the Finance Team as appropriate, including for coding information
• To update results reports and select and export other data if required
• To supervise and train volunteers and interns if required
• To undertake training in the functions of the role as described above
• To undertake any other appropriate duties as defined by the Fundraising Manager.