Grants Officer (Central/South West London)

The primary focus of the Grants Officer is to support schools and youth organisations to operate the Jack Petchey Achievement Award Scheme effectively and to promote, grow and deliver this and other Jack Petchey Foundation (JPF) grant programmes across London and Essex. This role will be largely responsible for London Boroughs across Central and South-West London, and act as the lead for specific uniform groups who deliver their activities cross-borough. Our work continually evolves, so we ask all Grants Officers to be flexible to allow us to rework geographical areas, as needed.

The Achievement Award Scheme is the Jack Petchey Foundation’s flagship programme, with more than 2,000 schemes being operated in more than 1,400 schools, colleges and youth organisations across London and Essex. Through the programme, we invest millions of pounds each year to support young people and youth work. This is an amazing chance for you to have a big impact across a large number of organisations.

The Achievement Award Scheme enables schools, colleges and youth organisations to recognise, reward and celebrate young people’s achievements. At the Jack Petchey Foundation, we are passionate about encouraging young people to raise their aspirations, believe in themselves and make a positive contribution to society. Our Achievement Awards are designed to recognise a wide range of achievement, not just those achieving academically but are also aimed at young people who are ‘doing their best’ or demonstrating leadership skills, resilience and determination.

The post holder will manage delivery of the scheme and associated small grants in an assigned area of London. They will be responsible for maintaining and developing positive relationships with schools and youth organisations. The role will involve significant travel to visit schools and youth organisations, as well as outreach and community engagement work to identify and support new groups to apply to join our scheme. This work will also require evenings and occasional weekend work, especially to carry out assessment and review visits with youth organisations and to participate in our Achievement Award celebration events.

The successful candidate would therefore be someone who has flexibility to travel, work out-of-office hours, enjoys building relationships and public speaking, as well as navigating a busy grants and assessment caseload (desk-based processing, telephone calls/emails, and daily use of a database). You will need to be happy to travel regularly around Central and South-West London, and to our office in Canary Wharf.

The Jack Petchey Foundation is an Equal Opportunities Employer and we seek to build a team that reflects the diverse communities we serve. We particularly welcome applications from black and minority ethnic candidates as they are currently under-represented in our team.

• To promote and strengthen the Jack Petchey Achievement Award Scheme and associated programmes (Leader Award Grants, Educational Visits and Learning Experiences, Environmental Awards and Partnership Programmes) in schools and youth organisations.
• To support schools and youth organisations to administer the Jack Petchey Achievement Award Scheme to a high standard and maximise the positive impact it has on young people.
• To ensure that schools and youth organisations make maximum use of the small programmes and partnership programmes associated with the Jack Petchey Achievement Award Scheme.
• To ensure that accurate data is recorded on all Jack Petchey Foundation systems.
• To support programme growth, impact and reach by building stakeholder relationships in your assigned local area.
• To assess new applications and monitor the impact of the Achievement Award Scheme and small grants awarded.
• To work with your colleagues in the Grants Team to deliver excellent grant making, review and improve processes, and strengthen relationships with all Jack Petchey Foundation stakeholders.

This is an exciting time to join us as we grow our work as a charitable Foundation. You will have an opportunity to use and develop a wide range of skills in a friendly, dynamic and supportive team that is committed to growing our positive impact on young people.

The Grants Officer role demands a wide range of skills and a high degree of autonomy, reliability and flexibility. You will need to be an efficient, highly organised team member with excellent communication skills and a passion for our work. You will need to be able to manage your own workload within agreed targets and maintain a programme of planned visits, while creating new development opportunities.

You will possess an eye for detail, good administration skills and the ability to communicate confidently and present a positive external profile for the charity. Evening and weekend work is a requirement to meet the demands of this role. This is a busy and satisfying role, with each Grants Officer leading relationships with between 350-400 organisations. You will have strong planning skills and the ability to deal efficiently with regular grant applications, and with busy grant reporting periods twice a year.

Evening and weekend work is a requirement of this role, which on occasion can require up to two to three out-of-hours events in one week, depending on the event schedule. These are seasonal events, primarily during term-time and time off in lieu will be granted for additional hours worked. We aim for our Grants Officers to be working in the office two-three days/week, depending on their visits and events schedule.

This is a perfect time to join the Foundation to support us to deliver our strategic plan – while we also streamline our processes, improve our support to our grantees, and review our grant-making criteria and guidance. This is your chance to make your mark within a motivated and ambitious team and help us to reach even more young people with our funding.

• Develop, manage and promote the Jack Petchey Achievement Award Scheme and other JPF opportunities.
• Identify schools and youth organisations not currently running the scheme and proactively promote the Achievement Award (AA) scheme to them, following up as required.
• Receive, assess and process all grant applications to join the AA scheme, in accordance with Jack Petchey Foundation policies and procedures.
• Attend, participate and assist with delivery of Achievement Award celebration events (usually evenings with some weekend events), including making a speech to congratulate the young people.
• Develop relationships with and support schools, alternative provision, and youth organisations on the Jack Petchey Achievement Award (AA) scheme to operate the scheme to the highest possible standard.
• Provide timely support to such organisations to enable them to run the AA scheme effectively.
• Implement a strategic approach to conducting face-to-face and digital assessment and monitoring visits to schools and youth organisations in your area on the Jack Petchey Achievement Award scheme, to ensure our funding is well spent and to identify opportunities to improve delivery.
• Organise and deliver digital and in-person training and/or sessions to support schools and youth organisations to operate the Jack Petchey Achievement Award scheme effectively.
• Ensure accurate records are kept on the Foundation’s database (Salesforce), including up-to-date contact details and records of communication with groups in receipt of or applying for grants.