The Opportunity

We are looking for both Senior Analysts and Associates to work flexibly across our different business areas, who are:

• Motivated by making social change happen

• Curious and interested to learn

• Innovative, creative thinkers, who like to solve problems

• Structured and analytical in their approach

• Self-motivated and adaptable with a temperament that suits the highs and lows of making change happen

• Team players who can build good working relationships with a variety of internal and external partners

About Your Work Here

Our teams work across many social issue areas. This includes working at the intersection of data, digital and public services in our Data and Digital team; partnering with local and central government and social enterprise in our Government & Enterprise team; investing in community-based services in Health & Social Care; transforming the relationship between health and work in our Health and Employment team; developing outcomes-based programmes in International Development; and working with foundations to build new partnerships to tackle social issues through our Impact Incubator.

As an Analyst or Associate, you may work on various types of projects, supported by more senior members of staff. Social Finance aims to create social change in partnership with like-minded organisations, and we use various avenues to do this:

• Systems thinking and design – developing innovative and long-lasting ways of solving social issues, ranging from new funding models to policy approaches, to service re-design solutions. For example, we have brought together several frontline charities to design a new programme of behaviour change to reduce domestic violence that is being scaled with support from the Home Office.

• Data analysis and research – from carrying out detailed data analysis to understand complex social issues, to conducting market research to advise investors on how they can generate a social and financial return, to helping government use their data effectively to make better decisions. For example, we draw together multiple data sets to identify which groups of young people are most at risk of poor long-term outcomes, such as unemployment, and use our conclusions to influence policy.

• Advisory work – assisting social sector and development organisations, and governments worldwide, to create new approaches to services and innovative funding mechanisms to underpin them. For example, we work with Local Authorities to design contracts based on the achievement of social outcomes to prevent young people going into care.

• Market building – from developing national strategies to create and develop SIB markets, to designing knowledge platforms that support the sharing of learning, to building the capacity of other players in the market to help replicate our work. For example, we work with governments and donors all over the globe to help create outcome-focused funds to improve the quality of primary and secondary education.

• Operational support - Individual Placement and Support (IPS) supports people with serious health difficulties to find and keep a job in an area that they are passionate about.  We are working with NHS England to expand the number of people who have access to high quality IPS.  We provide hands-on operational support to services, create and deliver free training and develop tools to help providers monitor their own performance. 

• Fund management – from supporting the development of an investment pipeline and carrying out due diligence on potential investments, to monitoring the performance of existing investments and supporting investees achieve their targets. For example, we manage a social investment fund in the health & care space which invests in social enterprises and projects with the aim of improving community health and wellbeing.

• Partnership building and relationship management- from working with frontline delivery partners, to coordinating with a range of local authority partners, to bringing together diverse sets of funders and investors. For example, Black Thrive works across government agencies, charities and community groups to address the inequalities that negatively impact the mental health and wellbeing of Black people in Lambeth and elsewhere.

About You

If you are excited by the challenge of addressing some of society’s greatest injustices, we’d love to hear from you. We are looking for people with a mix of the following skills, capabilities, and experience:

• An understanding of social problems – you have work or lived experience of some of the challenges we may work on. This could also be academic, research or work experience.

• Data & analytical skills – solid analytical skills to conduct analysis independently. You pay attention to detail and quality control your own work to produce accurate and reliable outputs in PowerPoint, Excel and Word. You can create financial and operational models that address underlying problems, drawing from comparable models in the business, social and development sectors.

• User Research & Design Thinking – an ability to plan, design and implement user research strategies to understand service users and their needs. Synthesising research data to build clearer pictures of potential service users to feed into project/product design.

• Communication, stakeholder management & relationship building – you make effective contributions in external meetings and can anticipate, support and build credibility and effective working relationships, both within and outside Social Finance. You summarise and disseminate information effectively, have excellent writing, listening and inter-personal skills.

• Project management – you document and catalogue your work, prioritise and plan your own work streams, communicate project progress effectively, invest your time appropriately to answer research questions, and formulate consistent and insightful presentations of findings and conclusions.

• Teamwork – you are a team player with an ability to work independently when required. You are receptive to feedback and use it to continually improve. You are also open to giving feedback to others with the goal of maintaining a constructive working culture.

• Problem solving – you look at a problem with a creative lens and suggest alternative solutions to the norm.

No one person has all of these skills. Social Finance has intentionally brought together people with different backgrounds and skillsets to create a team with a range of abilities to address social challenges. To give an indication of the level of experience we’re looking for, your peers are likely to have 3-5 years of work experience.

To view the full job advert please visit: https://www.socialfinance.org.uk/careers/vacancies