Lead and grow high performance trust and foundation programme to secure significant income.
Hybrid with minimum 2 days in the office in London
Hours
Full-time (35 hours per week) - flexible requests will be considered
£45,000 - £48,000 per annum (depending on experience)
- Closing: 11:59pm, 22nd Nov 2026 GMT
- Round 2 in person : from 1st December
Job summary
Whizz Kidz is transforming. Following the launch of a newly developed Fundraising strategy, this is an exciting time to lead and grow a high performing trusts and foundations programme that secures significant income to support young wheelchair users across the UK. This is a pivotal role, where you will help shape the ideas, vision and manage a portfolio of high value trusts and foundations, personally securing and stewarding five and six figure grants. You will lead a small team, providing strategic direction, coaching and support to maximise performance and income growth.
Working closely with colleagues across services, finance, fundraising and marcoms, you will develop compelling funding proposals, build strong relationships with funders, and ensure excellent stewardship through high-quality reporting and account management.
Reporting to the Head of High Value Relationships, you will play a key role in further developing and delivering the trusts and foundations strategy, identifying new opportunities for growth and ensuring the team achieves ambitious income targets.
The person
As the Trusts and Foundations Lead you will get into the heart of the organisation and use your passion, experience and skills to identify and lead approaches to trust, foundations, lottery and other organisations personally securing gifts of £50k-£1m+.
The Trust and Foundations Lead will be responsible for delivering annual trust and foundation income in excess of £4million through a combination of personally held relationships and team performance.
You will have experience identifying and researching prospects with capacity and propensity to support our work and you will have outstanding written skills, including the ability to present complex information in writing, with an excellent eye for detail. You will want to play a vital role within the High Value Relationships team helping to create a strong team spirit and high performing culture that is delivering against financial targets, proactively supporting efforts to unlock income to support young wheelchairs users and their families.
Key accountabilities.
- Support the Head of High Value Relationships in further developing and delivering the Trust and Foundations strategy.
- Monitor fundraising trends, opportunities and risks within the trust and foundations sector.
- Contribute to annual budgeting, forecasting and income planning processes.
- Analyse performance and pipeline data to inform decision-making and maximise income growth.
- Identify opportunities for cross-team collaboration to secure larger and multi-year funding partnerships
- Create compelling, persuasive funding applications, proposals, case for support and shopping list costs.
- Responsible for driving trust and foundation income against KPIs.
- Drive continuous improvement across systems and processes to strengthen funder engagement, demonstrate impact and maximise income.
Relationship & Stakeholder Management
- Play a pivotal role in the High Value Relationships management team.
- Research and build long-term relationships with funders through excellent stewardship and engagement, whilst ensuring they receive financial and written updates and progress reports, using the information garnered by colleagues in services, finance, fundraising and marcoms.
- Work with the Finance Team to ensure that accurate proposal budgets are created and donations are accurately coded and used to fund the projects or activities that they were raised for in a timely fashion. Work with key members of the delivery and finance teams to monitor spend on restricted grants.
- Support the implementation and adoption of a new CRM, ensuring it supports the Trusts and Foundations strategy and enhances team effectiveness
- Build strong internal working relationships with colleagues to facilitate the gathering of information for updates and in order to frame new funding proposals in line with the charity’s aims and objectives.
Line Management
- Lead, manage and develop the skills and capabilities of the Trust, and Foundations team, ensuring they receive the support and supervision they need to fulfil team and individual performance objectives.
- Foster a positive, collaborative and ambitious team culture.
- Lead on managing the team’s prospect research process, using Microsoft Dynamics to accurately monitor the impact of prospect research on income received from trusts and foundations.
The post holder will also
- Work within all policies, procedures and budgets set by Whizz Kidz.
- Act at all times in the best interest of Whizz Kidz.
- Form effective working relationships with all colleagues, volunteers and outside organisations as appropriate.
- Take responsibility for ensuring that the policies and procedures relating to Health & Safety in the workplace are adhered to at all times.
- Respect the confidentiality of data stored electronically and by other means in line with the Data Protection Act.
- Act as an ambassador for Whizz Kidz, representing the charity externally and promoting it’s mission and impact.
- Not disclose to an unauthorised person any confidential information acquired through official duties unless they have received official permission to do so.
The above list is not exclusive or exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such duties as may reasonably be expected within the scope and job rank of the post.
Please note: This post is subject to a Basic level DBS Disclosure, which will be sought prior to the confirmation of a job offer.
Person specification
Skills and knowledge
- Excellent written communication skills with experience of producing successful funding proposals and reports.
- Strong relationship management and stakeholder engagement skills.
- Excellent oral communication skills, including telephone manner.
- Excellent prospect research and pipeline management skills.
- Ability to communicate complex information clearly and persuasively.
- Strong organisational skills with excellent attention to detail.
- A team player with a confident manner who can develop effective relationships both internally and externally.
- Ability to analyse financial and impact information.
- Ability to work unsupervised.
- Highly motivated, proactive, positive and studious.
- Proficient users of CRM databases and Microsoft office.
- Good negotiation skills; the ability to challenge colleagues effectively in order to achieve the best outcome for Whizz Kidz
Experience
Significant experience of securing five-seven figure grants from trusts, foundations, lottery or statutory funders.
- Experience of operating successfully in Senior Trust and Foundations role.
- Experience of managing and motivating a small team.
- Experience of managing complex fundraising relationships and delivering excellent funder stewardship
- Experience of developing a stewardship programme for grants and trusts.
- Experience of writing successful proposals for new or innovative projects
- Experience of securing multi-year donations from trusts or other grant giving bodies.
- Experience of increasing funding from warm donors through relationship management
- Experience of improving efficiencies in monitoring grant spend
- A detailed knowledge of fundraising and changing trends in the funding environment.
- Experience of formal report writing.
- A positive ‘can-do’ attitude and the ability to work on own initiative with limited supervision.
- Able to work flexibly and creatively to respond to the emerging needs.
- Alignment with our values – young people focused, ambitious, inclusive and collaborative.
- Passionate about supporting young wheelchair users and creating societal change
- Collaborative and supportive team player.
- Strong leadership potential with the ability to inspire others.
- The ability to enthuse and engage others in the potential benefits of an engaging project.
- An unbounded curiosity for exceptional customer service and improving performance.
- Goals driven and creative problem solver with excellent judgement.
A few perks
The wellbeing of our colleagues is of paramount importance to our success as an organisation, and we want to ensure that our benefits package provides something of value for everyone, whether it is our generous holiday entitlement, wellbeing days, Healthcare cash plan, long-service awards. We hope you agree!
Annual leave
25 days of annual leave per annum plus Bank Holiday (pro-rata for part time colleagues).
Christmas closure
In addition to annual leave, employees get three days of paid Christmas leave.
Pension
Automatic enrolment for all colleagues with the option to opt out. Contributions of 5% gross salary made by both Whizz Kidz and employees. We will match higher contributions of up to 6% of gross basic salary.
Simple health
Automatic enrolment in a fully paid for cash plan that assists you with everyday health costs. This scheme is also available to your families for an extra charge.
Season ticket loan
An interest free loan of up to £5,000 following the successful completion of the Probationary Period.
