Contract:
Permanent
Working hours:
Full time (37.5 hours per week)/Part time (4 days per week) (we are happy to consider requests for part time hours or flexible working).
Location:
Hybrid working - at least two days per week in the Impetus office (currently based in Charing Cross, Central London). We may ask you to come to the office three days per week during the first three months to help set you up well for success – ensuring you get the support you need to thrive. In addition to this, all staff are expected to attend regular Impetus in person events. These include staff away days, training events and a monthly Townhall meeting where we come together in person for lunch and intentional cross-team working.
Starting date:
ASAP
Reports to:
Sector Lead
Direct reports:
Line manages one or more Investment Managers
*We recognise the importance of a good work / life balance. We do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, working part-time, job shares and other arrangements. Please let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you would like to explore.
About the team
The Investment team is responsible for selecting portfolio partners, managing our charity investments and supporting our portfolio partners to improve and scale their impact.
The Investment team also leads the Impetus Leadership Academy, a leadership development programme to support talent from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK youth sector to progress into senior leadership roles.
The team is made up of 18 people, including former teachers, charity chief executives, charity impact leads, management consultants, social investment portfolio managers and impact consultants.
The team is led by a Portfolio Director who sits on the Senior Management Team. The Portfolio Director has 5 direct reports: a Deputy Portfolio Director, three Sector Leads (who lead our work in school engagement, school attainment and employment sectors) and an Impact Lead. Sector Leads line manage 6 Investment Directors between them. Investment Directors line manage Investment Managers (currently 7). Investment Directors and Investment Managers tend to primarily focus on a sector but might have mixed portfolios, depending on need, experience and interest.
The Investment team has a good track record of role progression. All four Leads and a number of our Investment Directors were promoted from within the team.
About this role
We believe that all young people deserve to succeed in school and in work, whatever their background. As we enter a challenging time with rising inflation and a likely recession, our work feels more vital than ever before. The role of Investment Director presents an exciting opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the charities portfolio partners we serve, the team itself and the whole of Impetus.
We support a portfolio of 23 high potential charity and non-profit partners in the youth sector, helping them deliver benchmark-beating employment and education outcomes for young people, and to grow.
We believe the strength of our approach resides in three things:
- Building deep, trust-based, sustainable relationships with charity leaders by, investing time, kindness, integrity and honesty.
- Providing our charities multi-year, unrestricted funding to help them become sector-leading organisations and scale their impact.
- Offering tailored advice to charity leaders’ most pressing and strategic questions, including their mission, programme design, performance management, growth planning, and financial resilience.
Working with our portfolio partners is a privilege. The leaders we support are incredibly talented, passionate and keen for external advice, and the issues we work through with them are stimulating and stretching. Our senior management relationships are some of the most fulfilling relationships many of us have had in our careers, while the growth and impact performance of our partners are testament to charities’ commitment to disadvantaged young people and the influence we have on their development.
Charities and funders often comment on the quality of our people. Our team is analytical and data driven; we are deeply relational, low-ego and collaborative. We actively invest in our colleagues holding regular training and community of practice sessions, and use skills-based assessments to tailor development.
As an organisation we seek to embed diversity of thought, background and experience in every aspect of our work and actively challenge our assumptions to better deliver change. Over the past two years we have taken action to help reduce racial inequality in the youth sector. In 2021 we launched our Connect Fund to support diverse leaders and their robust solutions to the entrenched employment gap faced by young people from ethnic minority backgrounds compared with their white peers. We have also built a highly regarded Leadership Academy for emerging youth sector leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds, with generous funding from State Street Foundation.
If you are looking for a role combining strategic thinking, analytical insight and influencing emerging leaders, as well as the opportunity to work with a supportive team to transform young lives, I hope you will apply to work with us.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sebastien Ergas
Portfolio Director
Key responsibilities
Finding high potential charities and non-profit partners for our portfolio
- Identifying potential charitable organisations for investment.
- Leading and delivering in-depth due diligence process within the scope of a grant round, to assess and build partnership foundations with potential partners – covering leadership and governance, and their impact, scale, and partnership potential.
- Modelling from first contact of origination, our approach to engaged and trust-based investment management support.
- Developing and presenting high quality investment propositions to our Investment Committee.
Managing partnerships with portfolio partners
- Managing relationships with partner Chairs and CEOs.
- Agreeing Service Funding Agreements, including appropriate annual investment milestones to allow for a clear assessment of re-investment potential at end of phase.
- Regularly monitoring and assessing partner progress / risks against milestones and making evidence-based recommendations on progression or exit to Leads, Portfolio Director and the Investment Committee.
- Escalating key risks on performance, leadership and safeguarding.
- Conducting annual partnership reviews with Sector Leads and partner CEOs.
- Working with Impetus finance colleagues to ensure timely distribution of grant payments, in line with Service Funding Agreements.
Supporting portfolio partners
- Providing high quality advisory support to CEOs and senior colleagues on key strategic topics, using a mix of at least monthly one-to-one meetings and group facilitation to:
- clarify theory of change
- define long term ambition
- develop growth strategy
- achieve a step change in the delivery and performance management of outcomes
- strengthen leadership (individual and collective) and governance capabilities
- develop path to scale
- build financial resilience
- Scoping and project managing pro bono capacity-building projects (in addition to providing direct management support). Ensure projects are delivered to a high standard and contribute to charity progression.
- Identifying engagement opportunities for our donors and supporters with portfolio partners that are aligned with the partner’s activities and do not distract or undermine their core work.
- Collaborating with the Impetus Philanthropy team to support the development of additional funding opportunities for portfolio partners, enhancing their ability to deliver impact at scale.
- Effectively leveraging the support of investment managers to advance the objectives developed for each portfolio partner that is managed by an Investment Director.
Support to Impetus
- Developing expertise about “what works” in the sector through cultivation and use of expert input and engagement as well as investigation into key research and evaluative literature.
- Contributing insights and learning from portfolio work to inform Impetus’ strategy, model and delivery, providing evidence based recommendations to senior colleagues
- Contributing to internal priorities and working groups, bringing expertise and insight from portfolio work (e.g. team strategy discussions, digital improvement initiatives, or equity, diversity, and inclusion).
- Contribute towards Impetus’ public affairs and philanthropy objectives through input into case studies, research and policy campaigns, donor reports and fundraising events.
- Sharing the learning from our work across the team, across the organisation and externally working within Impetus strategy and agreed forums.
- Engaging in Impetus pro bono, communications, and advocacy events, and engage portfolio partners appropriately in these events.
- Line-manage and support one or more Investment Managers, setting clear objectives and providing coaching, feedback and development opportunities to enable them to deliver high quality work and achieve their individual, project and team goals
- Embedding inclusive and equitable practices in portfolio work, ensuring diverse perspectives are considered and barriers to participation are identified and addressed
Person specification
Essential
- A commitment to Impetus’ mission.
- Senior level responsibility and a strong track record of building trust-based relationships with senior stakeholders, advising them on key strategic decisions, and challenging them in a respectful and collaborative manner.
- A talent for strategic thinking around complex issues.
- Strong financial acumen and analytical skills.
- Understanding of impact measurement and evaluation fundamentals.
- Resilience, tenacity and initiative.
- Ability to adapt personal style to different leadership contexts, working inclusively and effectively with diverse leaders and organisations.
- Growth mind-set to seek out and act on feedback and a commitment to continuous learning and development.
- Proven ability to work independently, and to exercise good judgment.
- Strong planning and time management skills.
- Experience contributing expertise to team or organisational priorities, including sharing learning and supporting others’ development.
- Interest in partnering closely with charities that are doing what it takes to get better.
- A commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.
Desirable
- Experience in the non-profit (charity or social enterprise) sector, through work, as a pro-bono volunteer or Trustee capacity.
- Experience in consulting, investment management, senior charity management, or other in-depth grant making and advisory work.
- Knowledge and expertise in UK education or youth employability sectors.
- Board experience in private, public or third sector.
- Understanding of or experience with commissioning impact evaluations.
About Impetus
At Impetus, our focus is on helping young people achieve positive education and employment outcomes to increase their chance of leading fulfilling and successful lives, irrespective of their background.
We tackle the three most difficult challenges that affect a young person’s ability to succeed in life in Britain today:
- Lost learning through absence, suspensions, exclusions from school
- Stagnation in education attainment outcomes, which means many are missing out on key qualifications like GCSE English and maths
- The large numbers of young people out of education, training and employment
We use our deep expertise and high calibre networks to give the best non-profits working in these sectors the essential ingredients to have a real and lasting impact on the young people they serve.
Through a powerful combination of long-term funding, direct capacity building support from our experienced team and our pro bono partners, alongside research and policy influencing to drive lasting systems change, we work towards a society where all young people can thrive in school, pass their exams and unlock the doors to sustained employment, for a fulfilling life.
We are resolutely focused on outcomes and impact, driven by quality evidence.
You would be joining a team that is passionate, rigorous, determined, creative and warm. We care deeply for our colleagues, our portfolio partners and the young people we serve.
Impetus is a registered charity and our charity number is 1152262.
Our Values
In 2022 the Impetus staff agreed the following set of Values to act as our guiding principles as an organisation and help us to remain focused on achieving our mission to support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
We are brave and curious
We are bold and brave in our pursuit of better outcomes for young people. We lead with curiosity and stay open to new perspectives. We support one another to take considered risks and learn together.
We bring high trust, high challenge
We build strong, long-term relationships through honesty, kindness, integrity, and respect. We create the space for open, constructive challenge, where colleagues, partners and supporters feel safe to speak up, hold each other to account, and bring their best in pursuit of our mission.
We are evidence led and results driven for young people
We pursue excellence for the young people we work with, are wholly committed to better outcomes, unapologetically results driven, and accountable for our actions.
We thrive through diversity
We seek to embed diversity of thought, background and experience in every aspect of our work. We are open, thoughtful and proactive in better understanding and challenging our assumptions to better deliver the change we seek.
We always seek collaboration
We will not succeed alone. We seek meaningful, productive partnerships with others to achieve our mission and drive systems change for young people.
Our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion
We believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more open, creative and gets better results.
We want our team at Impetus to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our team to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.
We want to reach a diverse pool of candidates. We are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.
We recognise the importance of a good work/life balance. We do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, working part-time job shares and other arrangements.
Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.
Impetus is an equal opportunity employer and is determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. We value diversity and welcome applications from people of all backgrounds.
Our employee benefits
Impetus appreciates the invaluable contribution made by all employees and wishes to encourage and reward loyalty, motivation and experience. We therefore offer a range of benefits and policies which aim to assist employees during various stages of their lives and careers. For more information on these, please download the job information pack from our website.
How to apply
Please click on the "Apply for this job" button at the top of the page.
You will need to:
- Complete the online form (including the equal opportunities monitoring form)
- Upload a comprehensive CV and supporting statement.
The supporting statement should be no more than two sides of A4 and should address the criteria in the person specification.
You should also include the contact details of two referees, one of whom must be your current or most recent employer. Referees will only be approached with your express permission.
As part of our commitment to flexible working we will consider a range of options for the successful applicant. All options can be discussed at interview stage.
The deadline for applications is 2026, 11:59pm.
Interviews:
1st Interviews will take place on w/c 2026.
2nd Interviews will take place on w/c 2026.
You will also be required to provide proof of your eligibility to work in the UK.
Personal Data
Your personal data will be shared for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes our HR team, interviewers (who may include other partners in the project and independent advisors), relevant team managers and our IT service provider if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles. We do not share your data with other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you. We do not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.
