The purpose of the role is to guide and be responsible for the Trust’s monitoring, evaluation and learning activities, working closely with the Chief Executive and Head of Programmes. The Head of Impact and Learning will be a core member of the Trust’s management team and attend Board meetings where appropriate. Please visit here for the full job pack.

The duties will include strengthening existing evaluation and learning frameworks and recommending changes as we implement new programmes.

The role will be integral in evaluating progress of the Trust’s strategy and sharing learning across the Trust’s funding portfolio and with external partners. The role will also be responsible for co-production activities and facilitating ‘Funder Plus’ practical support for the Trust’s delivery partners (grant-holders). As the role and our strategy develops, a key element will be identifying workable programme models that have the potential to be scaled or adopted elsewhere to reduce gendered poverty.

You will be joining us at an exciting time in our 135-year history. Over the last five years we have awarded almost £11 million and tripled our grant expenditure from £1.4m in 2019 to £4.5m in 2020. We have supported over 40,000 women and over the next three years the Board have agreed to make additional funds available from our investments to meet demand and deliver our new Strategic Plan 2022 – 2024.

Duties and Key responsibilities

• Monitoring and evaluation methodologies

• Develop and operationalise a monitoring and evaluation framework to evaluate our progress against the priorities set out in the strategic plan

• Develop and strengthen the Trust’s approach to sharing learning internally and with external partners across all of our grant programmes

• Be responsible for the Trust’s data collection and analysis to help shape our grant-making programmes including our place-based grant making

• Commission research as agreed on gendered poverty, economic inequality and grant making

• Working with the Head of Programmes and Operations Manager, to agree requirements and implement a new database, data collection requirements and processes for sharing learning

Supporting delivery partners

• Support our delivery partners and Smallwood Programmes team to evaluate impact and support the implementation of programme aims and goals

• Work with the Head of Programmes and Operations Manager to support delivery of a capability building programme for our delivery partners

• Support a new place-based fund, coordinating learning and identifying workable models that can tackle the systems that cause gendered poverty. This will include managing any external evaluation and learning consultants/partners

Learning and Communication

• Guide a process of internal learning to ensure lessons are fed back into programme development

• Attendance at Board meetings to present learning and evaluation reports, working with the Chief Executive and Head of Programmes to present recommendations on programme development

• Relationship building with key external stakeholders to share learning on what works in tackling gendered poverty and how these approaches could be scaled or adopted elsewhere

• Work with the Head of Programmes to communicate our progress externally including reports, attendance at external meetings and networking events and running webinars or Smallwood events

• Oversee the Trust’s communications function, supporting our Programmes staff and external consultant on the day-to-day external communications

• Work with colleagues to develop and implement fundraising and communications strategies for new programmes

Good practice, core principles and innovation

• Integrate existing good practice, and emerging good practice, across our grant-making programmes to ensure a strong learning approach

• Work with the Chief Executive, Head of Programmes and Operations Manager to identify emerging trends and innovative approaches in grant-making

• Be responsible for embedding the principles of lived experience and co-production across our different programmes.

• Support the implementation of the Trust’s EDI Plan ensuring accountability and shifting power are maintained as core principles

• Participate in relevant forums, sharing learning on grant-making and programme development to help ensure a culture of continuous development within the Trust

General

• Represent and be an ambassador for the Trust

• Experience of and interest in identifying and tackling systems that cause gendered poverty would be an advantage

• Work to support the mission and values of the Trust

• Be flexible and carry out any other associated duties as may arise, develop or be assigned within the broad remit of the position

• Support and promote the Trust’s equity, diversity and inclusion polices and processes

• Work collaboratively with others

• Adhere to all Trust policies including safeguarding and data protection

• Treat with confidentiality any personal, private or sensitive information about individual organisations, staff, partners

Person specification

Experience

• Experience of communicating impact and learning to internal and external audiences

• Experience of co-production and working with people with lived experience

• Experience of working within a grant-making organisation

• Experience of working collaboratively with colleagues to implement new initiatives and taking a hands-on approach

• Experience of running and presenting at webinars and workshops

• Experience of working with senior leadership teams and Boards/trustees

Skills

• Research, analytical and report writing skills

• Communication and influencing skills to support our work with external partners

• The ability to establish, build and maintain a wide and effective network of external relationships to maximise the Trust’s impact

• Competent with Microsoft Office, databases, spreadsheets and writing reports

Knowledge

• Technical knowledge and practical experience of qualitative and quantitative monitoring, evaluation and research and its analysis

• Understanding of gendered poverty in the UK and the structural problems that persist

• Knowledge of grant-making and the grant-making sector

• Knowledge of the commissioning process

• An understanding of the value of joint ventures, partnerships and collaboration and willingness to contribute and compromise, while challenging assumptions if appropriate

Personal attributes

• Appetite for driving forward learning and positive change across the Trust’s different grantmaking programmes

• Flexible, solution-orientated and ‘can do’ attitude

• Ability to travel to delivery partners, projects and programmes across the UK

• An understanding of and commitment to tackling gendered poverty

• A commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion

• Strong understanding of gender inequality