Network Organiser

Salary: £35,805 full time (open to part-time)

Location: London (Hybrid Working Environment) or remote (must be in the UK)

Reporting To: Head of Community & Impact

About SCN

At The Social Change Nest (SCN), we’re radically transforming the funding landscape and strengthening civil society. We remove the financial and administrative barriers that often prevent communities, grassroots groups and informal movements from accessing funding and focusing on their core mission. We also work closely with funders, providing Grant Distribution and Fund Management services, enabling them to support social action with confidence and transparency.

We currently support over 700 groups across the UK and abroad addressing issues such as social injustice, climate, housing, wellbeing and racial justice. We are at the forefront of Fiscal Hosting in the UK and, since our inception in 2021, we have supported groups in securing over £37m in funding, helping them take advantage of opportunities that may have otherwise been unavailable.

About The Community Nest

Built of changemakers and allies offering their support and solidarity, The Community Nest is a place for groups to share skills, strengths, challenges, and resources — to lend a helping hand, grow a strong network and feel the power and hope that collaboration provides. The Community Nest supports grassroots unincorporated groups and networks to overcome the barriers they face by ensuring the tools, resources and skills needed to make social change happen are within reach. We provide opportunities for help with admin, training, capacity building, networking and more. We’re on a mission to facilitate a community of learning, kindness, solidarity and respect, creating a space to power change from the ground up.

This is a new role. We’re at an exciting point in the design iteration of The Community Nest. One year into delivery and equipped with a year of learning, we are growing and expanding our movement and community building work to best support our ecosystem and strengthen our offer. This will include building out our Participatory Grantmaking function and organising more in-person convenings to foster greater collectivity and knowledge sharing across our ecosystem.

As such, the ideal candidate should be comfortable taking a test and learn approach, working in and through the complexity that is movement building. You’ll also be just as comfortable rolling your sleeves up and running a simple coffee morning to get our groups chatting and connecting.

As part of the wider delivery and programmes team at SCN, this Network Organiser role is embedded in the tight-knit Community Nest team alongside the Community & Knowledge Lead and Head of Community & Impact.

About the role

We are looking for a creative and enthusiastic Network Organiser with excellent attention to detail, who enjoys talking to and connecting people and is excited by The Community Nest and the potential to increase its impact. This is a unique opportunity to support the largest network of unincorporated community groups in the country, and don’t forget that we also have networks overseas. We have some exciting opportunities coming up which can further develop the community and are looking for someone to support with the development, communications and connections across the ecosystem.

This role also represents a great opportunity to work directly alongside our partners who are a range of social change networks including Civic Power Fund, Practical Governance, Small Axe and more. Through this role you will benefit from the extensive knowledge of community building, network management and communication from all these sources.

There may be occasional evening and weekend work and we are committed to making this job an interesting and worthwhile opportunity. You should be open to regular travel across the country (average twice a month) to connect with our community in person. In these instances, travel and accommodation will be covered by The Social Change Nest.

Job Description

• Network Organising and Weaving
• Develop and implement engagement strategies for connectivity, knowledge exchange and weaving to build a self-organising thriving network and community.
• Connect members of The Community Nest ecosystem to each other and identify pockets of innovation across the ecosystem.
• Carry out regular group visits in person across the country and work closely with colleagues across our Community, Communications and Governance team to share learnings and insights.
• Support and organise peer learning sessions, Action Learning Sets and help foster knowledge exchange across the ecosystem with support from Head of Community & Impact and Community & Knowledge Lead.
• Lead on outreach and auditing of the ecosystem to help with mapping and iterative, responsive systems design.
• Ensure the Community Nest offers (training, action learning, events, learning resources) are maintained and well publicised.
• Support the community governance and work closely with the Head of Community & Impact to build out a Community Panel/Advisory Group.
• Ensure excellent accessibility practice across the entire Community Nest ecosystem.
• Communications & Marketing
• Act as an Ambassador to raise the Community Nest’s profile through social media, learning case studies and getting out and about to in-person events.
• Utilise strong oral and written communication skills that concisely communicate to stakeholders the big ideas that are being discussed in the ecosystem.
• Work closely with the Marcomms team to generate online communication such as blogs and case studies and set up online workshops and webinars using comms tools such as WordPress, WebinarPress, HubSpot and social media schedulers.
• Identify and manage online tools and platforms that enable quick communication and knowledge sharing across the ecosystem.
• Sustainability & Growth
• Support with the development and rolling out of our Participatory Grantmaking offer.
• With oversight from the Head of Community & Impact and the Community & Knowledge Lead, support budget management of The Community Nest.
• Provide insights and trends from the grassroots community with the wider team to facilitate dialogue with funders.

About you

First and foremost, the ideal candidate will enjoy getting out and about, have a positive attitude and be open to learning and growing with us. On top of seeking out partnerships and opportunities that will help SCN better support its community groups, you will be regularly holding spaces for groups to connect and feeding back any relevant insights to the team.

Skills & Experience

• A natural relationship builder with the ability to spot trends across the ecosystem; and to spot opportunities for network building and community weaving.
• Strong listening and analytical skills with the ability to hear in between the lines and also synthesise large amounts of information to bring back to the team for service design.
• Comfortable networking and holding relationships with a variety of stakeholders from hyper-local grassroots communities to large international movements or intermediaries.
• Ability to work both as part of a collaborative team but also independently when needed.
• Experience working in the network and community organising or social justice space.
• Experience facilitating peer learning spaces.
• Strong storytelling interest and skills.
• Awareness of trauma-informed approaches and how to embed these in community building.
• Familiarity with analogue and digital skills that enable movement building and foster connectivity.
• You must be able to manage your time effectively, and prioritise a varied and demanding workload. You’ll be organised, curious and enterprising, with well-honed people and strong writing and communication skills.

For full terms and benefits, information on our hiring process and our equal opportunities statement, please visit our main vacancies page or the full JD here: https://thesocialchangenest.org/scn-vacancies/network-organiser-the-community-nest/