Location: Community based, office in Bethnal Green, London, some home working
Responsible to: Head of fundraising & communications
Hours: Negotiable, between 28-36 hours per week
Salary: £36,423 (if full time, pro rata for part time)
We hope you find this job pack clear and welcoming and indeed, should you apply for this role, that you find the same to be true of our whole recruitment process. Please do let us know if you don’t. We genuinely welcome the feedback.
How to apply
By 9am on Tuesday 15 October please send the following to info@qsa.org.uk:
- Your CV, highlighting the areas of your experience most relevant to this role.
- Your supporting statement. We encourage you to look at the person specification in this pack and clearly demonstrate how you fit what we’re looking for within your supporting statement.
- We invite you to complete our online equity and diversity monitoring form.
Interviews are on Tuesday 29 October at our office in Bethnal Green – we can arrange an online interview if necessary. Due to our capacity, we will only be able to contact shortlisted candidates. We will send you the questions the day before the interview, and on the day of the interview we will also invite you to complete a short test, to further assess your fit to our person specification.
Being an equitable, diverse and inclusive organisation is very important to us. We warmly encourage applications from people who bring diverse perspectives, culture, and lived experiences. We have a particular focus on lived experience of poverty, race and heritage, and disability.
About the role
What does QSA do?
Quaker Social Action’s mission is twofold. We enable people on low incomes in east London and beyond to seek solutions to the issues affecting their lives. To do this, we listen and respond to the needs of the community by running practical, sustainable, and collaborative projects. Where we see the potential to bring benefit to communities outside of our own, we share our learning by running professional training, and by using our voice to seek structural change by speaking truth to power.
Our services are incredibly varied. We currently have nine different projects running, addressing a wide range of needs in a variety of ways, in person, over the phone, online. Services include crisis support for those unable to afford funerals; courses that enable people to manage their money more confidently; practical support for people experiencing homelessness such as a mobile library and a community kitchen space; wellbeing interventions; and a range of community development initiatives.
QSA was founded by Quakers in 1867, troubled by the social injustices of the time and keen to tackle them. This sense of taking practical action has stayed with us over our 150-year history and our organisational values are aligned with the Quaker value around equality. We are proud of our Quaker heritage and our place within the Quaker community. There is nothing religious about our work, our services, jobs and volunteering roles are open to all.
Learn more about our practical action against poverty >
"I’ve been homeless since June 2020. Pandemic, expired ID documents, unemployment, lockdowns in a row. A friend told me about Cook Up, much has changed thanks to what this project provides...I can feel obvious improvements in my body.”
Cook Up Participant
What are we looking for?
We are changing focus within our communications work to root this work much more into the services we deliver. Our expectation is for our storytelling officer to become deeply knowledgeable about our work and to bring us stories about the impact of living on a low income for people in the UK and the impact our work has for them.
Ethical storytelling will be at the heart of sharing the incredible work we do at QSA. It is about shining a spotlight on the people and communities we serve, while being mindful, respectful, and genuine in how we portray their stories. Our intention is to bring stories forward with empathy, authenticity, and a commitment to giving a voice to those who can go unheard or are marginalised. It is about working alongside people to help make them comfortable, confident and in control of disclosing their experiences through our communications.
Done well, this will cover the 5Ps of good storytelling – putting people at the heart, making it place based, building a library of evocative and sensitive pictures, choosing the right and distinct online platforms to share these stories and engaging emotionally and making that personal connection with our audiences, stopping them in their tracks and inspiring them to act.
QSA makes a difference in a variety of ways and our intention is to generate content to showcase:
- The support we provide to people on low incomes across our services, Made of Money, Down to Earth, This Way Up, Cook Up, Turn A Corner, Plaistow South Big Local and Pimlico Million.
- The support we provide to staff and volunteers from other organisations who are part of the two large networks we run, Money Guiders England Network and 4in10.
- The support we provide with the online tools and resources on our website.
- The readership and reach of reports published by QSA staff.
- The changes that can happen around policy or practice as a result of our work.
This role will involve building relationships with a broad range of people, with a very strong focus on the people we work with, and doing this in a creative and sensitive way, getting to the heart of the story, and developing emotionally engaging content.
These stories will contribute hugely to our fundraising, creating a pipeline of content for us to demonstrate our work, and contributing to our financial sustainability. Our work has campaigning strands and areas where we seek to influence both policy and practice, and these stories will provide rich evidence of the realities of struggling on a low income.
As a solid team player and a lynchpin at the heart of QSA’s communications work, you will be open to providing communications support in other ways too when required e.g. supporting service staff to create materials for workshops/promote their services, either directly or by liaising with contractors.
The role will also require the marketing of our services and growing the reach of our messages, mainly via our website and social media platforms, but also through published materials. So, this role will suit someone who is a natural and skilled communicator, and who relishes variety and building relationships.
Role description – stories & impact communications officer
Responsible to: head of fundraising & communications
Purpose of post: to gather the stories of people we have supported, generate ethical and compelling content to be shared internally and externally, to help build QSA’s public profile, and provide communications support to our wider team.
Main duties
1.To develop and uphold clear protocols to govern how we gather stories and impact, to hold ourselves to the highest standards around ethics and wellbeing.
2.To work across all QSA’s services to get to know the people who access them, sensitively asking people to share their stories or consent to photos.
3. To build a small group of people who have accessed QSA’s services and who are willing to speak with the media, on occasion, and to support them to do so.
4. To be responsible for content generation, on our website, across our social media platforms, through our publications, and with media outlets.
5. To be responsible for liaising with QSA team members re. their social media, website and communications needs, and to respond to those needs either directly or with the support of external contractors (web developers, designers etc.)
6. To actively grow QSA’s engagement across all social network platforms.
7. To pull together content into regular email briefings for QSA’s supporters and donors.
8. To work within QSA brand guidelines to provide recognisable and reliable content, while also keeping content fresh and engaging.
9. To commission additional assets as required from third party providers if/when specialist expertise is required, such as for the design of online tools, or specialist media work.
10. To track analytics to evaluate the impact of the content we produce and promote across all our platforms.
11. To work within, and actively promote, the policies and procedures of QSA.
12. Any other duties, as appropriate to the role, as agreed by the QSA director.
Person specification – stories & impact communications officer
Experience
- Experience of working for or volunteering for a charity, especially if UK based and community focussed, is highly desirable.
- Experience of communications work, in a paid or voluntary capacity, is highly desirable.
Ability
-
Excellent people facing skills, able to confidently build rapport with people, and sensitively approach difficult topics. Excellent verbal and written communication skills and, ideally, design skills.
- Ability to confidently produce and share content online - such as stories, images, videos - in a way that is sensitive and compelling.
- Ability to oversee content going out across multiple platforms e.g. social media, QSA website and occasionally in published form, ensuring that procedures have been followed (e.g. consent given, relevant staff have signed-off) and that deadlines are met. Ability to liaise with and commission services cost-effectively from third party organisations, such as designers and web developers, when required.
- Ability to be flexible and to adapt and respond to new challenges/opportunities.
- Ability to build collaborative working relationships across a wide range of people, including team members, colleagues, and QSA donors.
Knowledge
- Knowledge of social media platforms and their different audiences, and how to tailor content appropriate to each.
- Knowledge of basic design programmes e.g. Canva is ideal.
- Knowledge of poverty on families, households and communities in the UK and an understanding of/empathy for the impact of living on a low income.
Other
- Commitment to and understanding of equity, diversity and inclusion, in the workplace.
- A willingness to work within a Quaker ethos, as per the mission statement of QSA:
“To enable people on low incomes in east London and beyond to seek solutions to the issues affecting their lives.
To do this we will listen to and respond to the needs of the community by running practical, sustainable and collaborative projects.
We will share our work with others when it is clear it has the potential to bring benefits to communities outside of our own”.
Main terms and conditions of employment
- QSA uses the local government pay scales for salaries. This salary is on NJC scale point 21, starting at £36,423 (including London weighting) for a full-time/36 hours post.
All appointments are made at bottom of scale. - The roles are offered with a permanent contract.
- Part time or full time applications will be considered, between 28 - 36 hours per week.
- Full time leave entitlement is 25 days per year, plus 8 bank holidays, increasing to 27 days after 3 years of service, and 30 days after 5 years of service (pro-rata for part time roles).
- QSA operates a Christmas closure between Christmas and New Year. Days falling in this period are additional days off and not taken from the leave entitlement. An additional 6% of salary is paid into the QSA group pension, with a 2% staff contribution.
- Notice is 1 week during the probationary period and 4 weeks on its completion. The probation period is 6 months.
- QSA has a union recognition agreement with Unite, though staff can join any trade union.
- This is a hybrid role, spread across time in the community and the QSA office in Bethnal Green and a small amount of working from home.
Thanks again for your interest in this role.
To end, a brief insight into our work from Audrey:
“It was what I was looking for. The way they deliver the sessions makes it feel inclusive and non-judgemental…the energy felt tranquil.”
Audrey, online participant of our This Way Up mindfulness and coaching course