Head of Fundraising & Communications

Location: Office-based (currently Bethnal Green, likely to be Euston from Sept 2026) with some home working.

Salary/job band: £56,463 (for 36 hrs) or PTE

Team: Fundraising & Communications

Contract type: Permanent

Hours: 28-36 hrs per week

Reports to: Director

Line manages: Fundraising co-managers, communications manager

Purpose of role

To plan and oversee QSA’s income generation and communications work. To strategically support the success of QSA as part of the leadership team.

Role overview

This is a linchpin role for QSA. We are looking for a hard-working, experienced and creative fundraiser. Our head of fundraising & communications oversees all of our income generation portfolio, including charitable trusts, public bodies, individual giving, and fundraising events.

Above all, we are looking for a candidate who believes in QSA’s mission and values, who can convey this passion through our fundraising and communications. 

We recognise that the current fundraising climate is challenging. As a charity, we have a sizable and engaged network of supporters and an excellent reputation for delivering innovative services.

The head of fundraising & communications is also responsible for overseeing QSA’s communications output, ensuring we build great relationships and successfully share our impact, stories and expertise across a variety of channels.

This is an exciting opportunity to build up a broad experience base in communications. Our approach to this work is centred in an ethical storytelling mindset. Our work has a national profile and we’re keen to maintain our reputation and our media presence.

Our head of fundraising & communications will also join the leadership team, working closely with the head of finance, the head of services and the director. This is a tight knit group with the purpose of supporting the longer term and strategic work of QSA.

You will be welcomed into a wider team at QSA that is enthusiastic, expert, and highly committed to social justice. We are proud of our ability to collaborate successfully and to celebrate one another’s success.

 

About Quaker Social Action (QSA)

Quaker Social Action’s mission is twofold. We enable people on low incomes to seek solutions to the issues affecting their lives. We listen and respond to the needs of communities and run practical, sustainable and collaborative projects.

Secondly, we share our learning where we see the potential to bring benefit to communities outside of our own – by running professional training, and by speaking truth to power to seek structural change.

Our services include crisis support for those unable to afford funerals; practical support for people experiencing homelessness, such as a mobile library and a community kitchen space; and free mindfulness and wellbeing programmes.

Learn more about our practical action against poverty >

QSA has a rich 150-year history with roots in the Quaker movement. Our work is still guided by Quaker values like Truth and Justice, and we are proud of our place within the Quaker community. At the same time, there is nothing religious about our work: our services, jobs and volunteering roles are open to all.

“The advice and support was beyond beneficial. As a family we were just above the threshold for getting any financial support and at a very difficult time already, money worries was the last thing we needed.”      

- Down to Earth funeral costs helpline caller. above: Down to Earth service.

 

Duties & responsibilities

Income generation

  1. To design and develop a fundraising strategy for QSA, incorporating a wide range of approaches, including statutory sources, charitable trusts, individual donations, legacies, earned income from training, and event fundraising.
  2. To set clear targets based on previous trends, and realistic aspirations for growth.
  3. To ensure all fundraising activity sits within the required legislative framework and complies with best practice, especially regarding donor consent.
  4. To ensure accurate financial information is presented within fundraising materials.
  5. To ensure that QSA fundraising applications are supported by up-to-date evidence of need, gained from relevant research and policy developments.
  6. To ensure that QSA fundraising applications are supported by up-to-date evidence of impact, gained from internal monitoring systems.
  7. To identify and lead major funding applications.
  8. To build strong and warm relationships with funders and donors of QSA.
  9. To ensure QSA is compliant with all grants and contracts and provides accurate and timely monitoring reports back to funders.
  10. To ensure that project teams are aware of funders supporting their work and are clear what targets or commitments are in place with these funders, including reporting requirements.

Communications, marketing, media, brand, digital

  1. To design and develop a communications and marketing strategy for QSA, incorporating a wide range of approaches across a number of appropriate channels and platforms.
  2. To understand best practice in charity communications and marketing and use this to promote the work of QSA.
  3. To manage QSA’s approach to reputational risk through our communications output.
  4. To oversee the development of the content, structure and key messages of QSA’s online communications channels; specifically our website, email marketing and varied social media platforms.
  5. To oversee the digital marketing development of QSA, ensuring we have clear systems and protocols to analyse, track, measure and review our output.
  6. To understand the benefit of and risks of using AI in our fundraising and comms output and to be part of the strategic leadership around emerging best practice.  
  7. To oversee diverse and evolving ways to communicate, using podcasts, videos, data, photos as well as high quality copy.
  8. To oversee media relations and protocols for media engagement for QSA.
  9. To develop proactive and strategic communications responses very quickly or under pressure to manage situations of risk or opportunity for QSA.
  10. To oversee and develop the QSA brand, ensuring it communicates our core purpose and is consistent with our values.
  11. To oversee our duty of care to our participants who share their stories, ensuring we approach this with due care, sensitivity and respect for their autonomy, and that we have sufficient safeguards in place to be attentive to their wellbeing.

Leadership

  1. To work collaboratively with the leadership team to support the strategic development of QSA. To provide materials that support QSA’s trustees to undertake their governance tasks.
  2. To work alongside the head of finance to provide accurate and timely quarterly reports for the trustees’ finance & fundraising committee.
  3. With the head of finance, to be responsible for regular reconciliation of finance and fundraising records and for annual audit processes.
  4. To work alongside leadership colleagues in all operational matters. To offer ideas for service development, to identify resource needs, and to share strategies to support team wellbeing.  

Organisational requirements

  1. To work within, and actively promote, the policies and procedures of QSA.
  2. Any other duties as appropriate to the role, as agreed by the QSA director. 

“I feel the service from these marvellous book fans and their very committed, caring staff are an essential…I use them twice a week every week. Please may they continue.”                                                  

- Anonymous Turn a Corner library visitor. above: Turn a Corner library van for people experiencing homelessness.

 

Person specification

Experience

  1. Significant experience of charity fundraising from a wide range of sources, especially charitable trusts and individual donors. 
  2. Experience of communications activities/digital development is highly desirable.

Skills

  1. Ability to write creative and engaging copy for a range of different audiences.
  2. Ability to build excellent collaborative working relationships with a wide range of people; including within the close-knit QSA team, external partners, funders and QSA supporters. 

Knowledge

  1. Knowledge of differing funding streams suitable for an anti-poverty charity – i.e. trusts, statutory sources, corporate support, individuals, legacies.
  2. Knowledge of a range of communications channels and platforms and of the best ways for a charity to utilise these.
  3. Knowledge of technology, including AI, as a way of furthering reach and impact. 

Personal Qualities

  1. Exceptional ability to prioritise workload and accurately deliver work to deadline.
  2. Demonstrates inner resilience, and ambition to deliver work of the highest standard.
  3. Ability to be flexible and have a ‘hands-on’ attitude when required.
  4. Commitment to and understanding of the role of equity, diversity and inclusion, in the workplace and in service provision.
  5. A willingness to work within a Quaker ethos, as clarified by the mission of QSA.

 

The recruitment process

Our intention is to be clear and transparent in the recruitment process. We want to be respectful of your time and are aware that applying for roles can be time consuming. If you would like to talk with the QSA director to further understand this role before submitting an application, please email judithmoran@qsa.org.uk to arrange this.

By 10am on Thursday 22 January, we’d like you to send to info@qsa.org.uk:

  • Your CV, highlighting the areas of your experience pertinent to this role.
  • Your supporting statement, explaining why you want this role and your match to the experience, skills and values we’re looking for.
  • We also invite you to complete our online equity and diversity monitoring form.

Your application will be acknowledged and we will let you know if you’ve been shortlisted or not.

We will meet shortlisted candidates on Thursday 29 January at our office in Bethnal Green. Here you will have the opportunity to meet the fundraising and communications team you’d be working with, the leadership team you’d be working alongside, and the director and one of the trustees to whom you’d be responsible.  To mitigate some of the stresses of interviews, we will send you the biographies of the people you’d meet and the interview questions in advance.

We’re hoping to be able to make decisions that day, and make a job offer. However, we may not be able to do this if we want to speak again with a couple of candidates.

Being a diverse and inclusive organisation is very important to us. We’re particularly focused on three elements of this: lived experience of poverty; race & heritage; and disability.  We actively encourage applications from candidates of diverse cultures, perspectives and lived experiences.

We hope that you find this job pack and our recruitment process clear and welcoming. Please let us know if this is not the case, at info@qsa.org.uk. We want to do recruitment well and feedback really helps.

 

Main terms and conditions of employment

  1. QSA uses the local government pay scales for salaries. Your salary will be on NJC scale point 41-44, which starts at £56,463 (including London weighting) for a full-time/36 hours post. All appointments are made at bottom of scale. 
  2. This is a permanent position.
  3. This post can be offered as a role to be worked between four and five days per week, so 28 hours to 36 hours per week. We pride ourselves on our flexible working practices.
  4. Leave entitlement for a full-time post is 25 days per year, plus 8 bank holidays, with the leave year running from January to December. This increases by 2 days after 3 years of service and a further 3 days after 5 years of service. QSA closes between Christmas and New Year and days falling within this period are not taken from your leave entitlement.
  5. QSA pays an additional 6% of salary into the QSA group personal pension, with a 2% staff contributory element.
  6. We have probationary periods of six months and the period of notice is 1 week during the probationary period and 8 weeks on its completion.
  7. QSA has a union recognition agreement with Unite although staff are welcome to join any trade union or none.
  8. This is a hybrid role. We see the benefits of being in the office with colleagues on a regular basis, and consider 2-3 days per week in person to be ideal for this role.
  9. The successful candidate will be required to obtain a basic DBS check. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act applies.

Thanks again for your interest in this role.

“It was what I was looking for. The way they deliver the sessions makes it feel inclusive and non-judgemental. Participating online, the energy felt tranquil.”

- Audrey, online attendee of our This Way Up mindfulness and coaching course