Social Investment Manager – Bridges Outcomes

Are you looking for a life mission and a rewarding career where you can help find ways of tackling social and environmental problems in the UK and globally? Do you want to change the world and people’s lives? Bridges Outcomes Partnerships is looking for enthusiastic and motivated individuals who are intellectually curious and understand the value of how collaborative design, flexible delivery and clear accountability can contribute to achieving a positive social, health and environmental impact.

Bridges Outcomes Partnerships is a mission-driven not-for-profit social enterprise. We work with Government, community groups and specialist partners to design and deliver vital services that support people to improve their lives, in areas ranging from education and wellbeing to housing, employment and environmental protection. Over the last decade, we have had the privilege of working on 100+ outcomes contracts, supporting over 1,400,000 people, delivering £200m+ worth of outcomes across the globe and creating £1.9bn+ of public value in the UK.

There is a strong case for expanding Social Outcomes Partnerships in the UK and other high-income countries: Needs in our communities are increasingly complex and interconnected. Traditional service provision and delivery often struggle to tackle wicked social problems. Public resources are stretched – making long-term holistic funding for comprehensive services challenging. This is why Social Outcomes Partnerships can be part of the solution – offering holistic, localised, and personalised solutions with our communities.

The role of Bridges Outcomes Partnerships spans project development, partnership coordination, project and delivery management, and project finance. Our own funding comes from a group of pioneering social investors, including The Office for Civil Society, Better Society Capital, UBS Optimus Foundation, Pilotlight, Trust for London, who, like us, are motivated by improving lives and changing the system for the better.

We would love to hear from you if you are:

• Curious, analytical, highly numerate, and great at solving problems
• Exceptional at building strong working relationships with team members and across a range of stakeholders
• Flexible and adaptable team player with a can-do attitude
• Able to undertake a variety of activities with a substantial degree of personal responsibility and autonomy

About the opportunity

We are looking for someone exceptional to join our team as we build new projects and partnerships. As a Social Investment Manager, you will work on the outcomes contracts activity in both the UK and other high-income countries. You will develop new projects and partnerships along with ongoing management of the existing portfolio. Here’s a taste of what you’ll do:

• Initiate and execute the development of outcomes partnerships opportunities: Identifying and engaging with challenges faced by central and local government and delivery partners to develop impactful delivery models which tackle those challenges.
• Lead on the implementation of a full project lifecycle of an outcomes-based project and a portfolio of outcomes partnerships, including tasks such as leading on initial assessment and investment processes in project development, developing outcome contract models, leading operational and financial analysis, managing complete legal negotiations and documentation processes.
• Innovating in our delivery: Proactively engaging with key stakeholders to develop and implement delivery innovations while considering any key assumptions around operations, impact, and finance; supporting teams to solve problems using first principles.
• Creating and maintaining excellent stakeholder relationships: Engage in strong rapport-building with commissioners, outcome funders, and delivery partner teams; identify best delivery team structure for our internal operational teams; and contribute to social investor meetings to present project and market development activities.

Key attributes we are looking for:

• A genuine passion to drive social change: We are constantly searching for new ways to dramatically change the status quo.
• Ability to deliver more than the system expects: We believe that more is possible than the current system is achieving, and we need to demonstrate this in practice.
• Ability to think differently: Our projects and investments all require the team to think through each problem from first principles and find the most effective and efficient new solution in each case.
• Ability to build and maintain trust: We aim for the edge of what we believe is possible, from ourselves and our partners; this can only be achieved through mutual trust.
• A self-starter comfortable working through complexity and coordinating diverse sets of stakeholders against tight deadlines and competing priorities.

Suitable candidates will have:

• 7+ years of experience working in social investment, financial and senior operational roles within the VCSE sector, management consulting, public sector delivery, or similar sectors.
• Excellent financial and modelling skills, with extensive experience in supporting the development of comprehensive business/financial plans.
• Strong delivery and investment, advisory and/or operational track record.
• Higher degree level education or equivalent experience.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, adept at working with multiple stakeholders.
• Experience supporting the development of comprehensive value creation strategies.
• Strong strategic, commercial and entrepreneurial judgement.
• Experience of working with government partners to develop social change projects is desirable.
• Experience of the social sector is desirable.
• Experience of impact investing is desirable.
• Experience working on projects tackling developmental challenges, preferably in areas like education, health and employment is desirable.
• Dutch language skills are desirable.

Safeguarding Commitment: As part of Bridges, you will help create a safe, supportive, and empowering environment for everyone we interact with. We believe safeguarding is a shared responsibility, where all colleagues play an active role in promoting wellbeing, identifying safeguarding concerns, and working together to ensure these are addressed promptly and respectfully.

Data Protection Commitment: As part of Bridges, you will play an important role in protecting the privacy, rights, and personal information of the people we support, our colleagues, and our partners.

What we will offer you: We are a flexible employer and we will support you to ensure you achieve a healthy work life balance. You will be joining an incredibly dedicated, vibrant, dynamic and talented team of people who are deeply passionate about services which improve people’s lives and public sector reform. You will get 25 days’ annual leave plus 8 days for bank holidays and 2 additional ‘gifted’ day/s between Christmas and New Year. We offer a Salary Sacrifice Pension Scheme, Life Insurance, Income Protection Insurance and wellbeing benefits & resources. We also offer Private Medical Insurance on successful completion of your probation period. You will be able to access Learning and development opportunities.

Bridges Outcomes Partnerships is an equal opportunities employer and ensures that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and will make reasonable adjustments for any part of the recruitment process for candidates who meet the minimum criteria for the role. Please note, for this particular role candidates will require Right to Work in the UK.