Are you passionate, creative and curious about creating change in communities across the UK?
We’re looking for two proactive people to join our UK Portfolio Team as Portfolio Officers. These roles are being offered as secondments until 31 March 2025.
Due to business needs, we will only be considering internal applicants and individuals already in the civil service that have a short notice period (four weeks or less).
The UK Portfolio supports the ambitions and potential of communities across the UK. Our funding is intended to complement the work of other country portfolios: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We focus on scaling projects with a UK-wide benefit, through significant investments, which enable systems-level change for communities.
We’re a relatively small team with wide ranging experience and interests, which reflects in the work we deliver. Annually we distribute approximately £80m across different programmes supporting projects from Fife to Omagh, Teesside to Bridgend.
Our new strategy has reaffirmed our purpose: it starts with community. We’ll continue to support amazing community-led projects and make a bigger difference in the years ahead. This isa time of optimistic change and growth as we deliver our ambitious new strategy.
Portfolio Officers are at the core of what we do, they work closely with grant seekers to support them through our funding, assess their applications and provide recommendations to our decision makers. They also work closely with grant holders ensuring public money is spent appropriately within communities across the UK and share learning and insights from the work we fund.
You’ll report to one of our Portfolio Managers and work with other Portfolio Officers across different areas of the team.
Our current open programmes are The UK Fund and the Climate Action Fund.
You will work across the full life cycle of our grant making which might mean helping the design of new programmes; assessing applications on current, open programmes; managing and closing down grants as they are completed. You will also support the effective running of team meetings and be responsible for ensuring our data is accurate and of high quality.
You’ll be joining a dynamic and welcoming team, working with hugely important and fascinating projects that are responding to and addressing a wide range of topics from employment to climate, racial justice to community cohesion, to youth voice.
These roles would suit people who:
- can work flexibly at pace and to tight deadlines
- are adept at building and maintaining relationships with those from a range of backgrounds and job roles
- can apply critical thinking and learn quickly about complex and nuanced issues, think about and create connections and synthesize this information to present it to others in a clear and concise manner
- can use their initiative and manage their time working comfortably with competing priorities and deadlines and a can-do attitude
- are comfortable working with an online and geographically dispersed team
- are comfortable learning and working with different systems and data
Importantly we need people who are curious about the society we live in and passionate about making a difference through our funding and the vital role of charities and voluntary organisations in helping communities to thrive.
You will need to travel from time to time for this role, supporting colleagues and communities across the UK. We do not expect this to be any more than one occasion per month.
Interview Date: 31st October,4th and 5th November
Location: UK Wide
We have a hybrid approach to working, work pattern and location will be agreed with the successful candidate. The role can be based at any of our UK offices, these are Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Newcastle and Newtown.
If you would like an informal conversation about the role specifically, please contact: [email protected]
Any questions about the recruitment process, please email: [email protected]
On application, please align your supporting statement to the criteria below
Essential criteria
- Communication skills: Strong listening, written and verbal communication skills. Capable of producing high quality written reports and presentations to set deadlines, with the ability to communicate complex ideas in an engaging and clear manner.
- Analytical skills: Ability to assess applications and absorb a wide range of information to make judgement-based decisions with confidence, offering challenge when appropriate and managing risk appropriately throughout the grant making lifecycle.
- Organisational skills: Ability to use your initiative and manage a caseload of assessments and grant management, dealing with competing priorities and deadlines and demonstrating strong organisation and prioritisation skills.
- Relationship building: Ability to build and nurture effective and collaborative relationships between colleagues, community organisations and other external stakeholders, with a strong commitment to equity and inclusion.
· Desirable criteria
- Alignment with our work: An understanding of, and preferably experience with, funding work that aligns with the ambitions and programmes of the UK Portfolio.
- Sector insight: Knowledge and understanding of communities and the voluntary sector in the UK, and the ability to spot trends and identify opportunities for our programmes.
- Continuous improvement: Ability to identify opportunities for learning and improvement across the team by taking a proactive approach to problem-solving and continuous improvement.
- Data and finance: The ability to understand and assess data and financial information, and present this in a way that it can be accessible for others
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Communities in the UK come in all shapes and sizes. National Lottery funding is for everyone – therefore, we are committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and we work hard to ensure our funding reaches where it is needed.
We also believe our people should represent the communities, organisations and individuals we work with. That’s why The National Lottery Community Fund is committed to being an inclusive employer and a great place to work. We recognise and celebrate the fact that our people come from diverse backgrounds. We positively welcome applications from people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities or longstanding health conditions, people who are LGBTQ+, and people from different socio-economic and educational backgrounds, as well as people of all ages.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we take a proactive approach in making reasonable adjustments, if needed, throughout the recruitment process and during employment. (This can be related to a physical and mental health condition.)