Grants Manager

About FareShare South West

FareShare South West joins the dots between food waste and hunger, empowering communities to turn an environmental problem into lasting social good. We rescue tonnes of quality surplus food from the industry and share it with charities and schools to bring health, dignity, and routes out of poverty for people across the south west. Our supportive volunteering and employability programmes offer local people the opportunity to thrive. By joining us, you’ll be part of an inclusive, friendly team in a small but fast-growing charity that helps fight the injustice of who gets to afford a healthy diet. FareShare South West is an independent local charity, working in partnership with FareShare UK. By being part of the national FareShare network, we can help rescue more food. By being small and independent, we can remain close to our local partners and people and continuously adapt to meet the needs of local communities. The member charities we share food with transform lives, using food to connect people with other support and routes out of poverty, including children and families, people on low incomes, homeless people, refugees, domestic abuse survivors, people in recovery, older people, and many others.

Purpose of role:

FareShare South West’s (FSSW) fundraising need and strategy has developed and diversified rapidly in line with major growth since 2017. As a charity we annually raise over £700k in fundraised income from trusts and foundations, corporate donations, individual donors, major donors, community fundraising and events. In the next year this is set to grow as we plan exciting new services across Bristol, Devon, and Cornwall. The Grants Manager (GM) is a new fundraising role that will be vital in supporting our growing team with bid writing to grant-making trusts and foundations. Trust and foundation income has historically been the biggest source of fundraised income for FSSW, which we aim to grow further to over £1m in the next three years. We are looking for an individual with experience of researching and writing applications to secure five and six figure grants from trusts, foundations, and statutory sources. With excellent spoken and written communication skills they will be happiest writing applications and reports. The GM will be responsible for securing income for capital and revenue-based projects, from both existing and new funders, leading on larger budget (£15k+) applications.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Build and manage a robust pipeline of medium-large value funding applications, securing grants of £15,000+ from trusts, foundations, and, where required, statutory bodies.
• Sustain and grow income from medium and large trusts and foundations through applications, effective stewardship, and timely reporting.
• Develop an in-depth knowledge of FareShare South West’s impact and operations in order to craft compelling fundraising proposals, reports, and fundraising campaigns.
• Develop and nurture relationships with existing and prospective funders, delivering outstanding stewardship.
• Work with the Head of Fundraising (HOF), Senior Leadership Team and Finance Manager to create restricted project budgets.
• Work closely with wider FareShare South West’s operations, volunteering, membership, and food teams to collect quantitative and qualitative data to measure outcomes for funder reports.
• Lead on the reporting schedule for all grant funders, ensuring timely reporting. Support the Trusts and Grants Officer with small grant reporting.
• Analyse monthly grants fundraising performance against targets and KPI’s, and report to the HOF on progress.
• Develop a good understanding of the capabilities of the CRM database (Donorfy) to be able to pull detailed reports to inform strategy / team decision making, alongside regularly updating with all your grant donor data.
• Work with the wider fundraising team on income analysis and development of annual goals (KPIs) and the multi-year fundraising strategy.
• Stay up to date with developments and trends in grant fundraising.
• Act as an ambassador for the charity, representing FareShare South West at events and networking opportunities.

Person Specification

Essential knowledge, skills & experience – evidence required:

• Excellent written and verbal communication with high attention to detail.
• Three years+ experience of writing grant applications in a charity role.
• Significant experience of researching available funding, collating project information, and producing high quality, compelling trust funding applications.
• Experience of securing five figure+ single and multi-year grants.
• Experience of working with and gathering information from project teams to develop clear project narratives to support funding applications and reports.
• Ability to produce project budgets with support from finance team.
• Excellent people skills and proven ability to form good working relations, both internally and externally.
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage time, prioritise and plan effectively.
• IT literate with a good working knowledge of Microsoft Office applications.
• A clear commitment to the ethos of FareShare South West, and to the agreed plans of the organisation, and able to positively contribute towards its achievement.

Desirable knowledge, skills & experience:

• Experience with using a CRM database to manage grant cycles, stewardship, and reporting.
• Project management experience.
• Experience of Adobe InDesign.

Why work for FareShare South West

• Real Living Wage employer.
• Benchmarked pay scales.
• Employee Assistance Programme – free legal advice, HR support and counselling.
• Access to a free professional coach.
• Annual budget for personal development training for every staff member.
• Staff wellbeing group and Mental Health First Aiders.
• Inclusive, welcoming culture.
• Rewarding roles with genuine positive impact on the environment and local people through food, volunteering, and employability skills.

We actively encourage applications from people of all lived experiences, including but not limited to people from the global majority, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, a working-class background, not from a University-attending family. We value the positive impact that wide representation has on FareShare South West. We want to work with you to make sure that the recruitment process is accessible for you. Please contact us to let us know how we can support your access needs.