About us

Spring Impact is supporting the world’s most ambitious social purpose organisations to solve big problems. We partner with teams who are doing truly transformative work but are frustrated that they could be reaching many more people. Over the last ten years, we’ve worked with over 250 organisations across the world, and we’ve learnt a lot about what it takes to scale social innovations, and are confident in the tried-and-tested approach we’ve developed to partnering with others on their journey. We support organisations primarily through direct consultancy with charities and social enterprises. We also run training and publish tools supporting mission-driven organisations to understand how they can scale and reach more people. We also aim to influence the sector, with a focus on trusts and foundations, to create an environment that supports mission-driven organisations with proven solutions to scale them up.

About the role

Delivering complex, multi-year programmes is at the heart of Spring Impact’s model for supporting mission-led organisations to scale their impact. With several transformative programmes underway, we are looking for a Programmes Manager to join our growing Programmes team, and to play an integral role in both delivering and developing Spring Impact’s programmes in support of our ambitious strategic goals.

The main focus of this role initially will be to lead on the set up and delivery of the Transform Collective programme in East and Southern Africa. This is an interesting new collective impact programme, working to prevent family separation and advocate for family and community-based care approaches, where Spring Impact is playing the backbone role, working closely with a delivery partner. This will involve programme design, convening diverse actors, guiding vision and strategy, and building public will. 

The role is available either full-time or part-time, from minimum 2.5 days per week upwards to 5 days per week, depending on what would work best for you. The role would look different depending on the number of days worked, and workload would be adjusted accordingly:

• If the role was 2.5 days, our current expectation is that the candidate would be managing one programme (Transform East and Southern Africa).

• If it was more than 2.5 days, you would eventually have a portfolio of 2-3 programmes. In the meantime, you would take on the role of Senior Consultant part-time, working directly with mission-driven organisations to support them on their journey to scale.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a dynamic and friendly team, and to take ownership to deliver and innovate our programmes, taking our work with non-profits and foundations to the next level.

This role presents a unique opportunity for candidates with the following experience:

Essential

• A minimum of 5 years of relevant professional experience.

• Experience working or living in Eastern and/or Southern Africa, with a deep understanding of the social and cultural landscape in the regions.

Desirable

• Experience specifically in the areas of prevention of family separation, care reform, or child protection

The role

The core responsibilities of this role are:

1) Leading the delivery of Spring Impact’s programmes, with support from the Director of Programmes and a member of the consulting team.

For the programmes that you are responsible for delivering, this is likely to involve:

• Leading relationships with foundations and funder partners 

• Leading relationships with our local delivery partners

• Providing coordination and coaching to partners to support their scaling journeys, and enable the collective to work effectively together 

• Leading on the design and delivery of programme strategies

• Coordinating monitoring, evaluation and learning systems and processes, in collaboration with partner organisations

• Recruiting partner organisations, Advisors, and associates as needed, and managing relationships ongoing

• Managing the communications strategy, in close collaboration with the Marketing and Communications team

• Designing and coordinating network events

• Ensuring the consultancy team have the right information, tools, mindsets and motivations to deliver on the programmes; and supporting the team ongoing 

• Reporting to foundation partners, Spring Impact Board, and any other relevant stakeholders

2) Supporting the programmes team to design and secure new programmes.

This is likely to involve: 

• Designing and pitching new programmes in collaboration with Programmes team members, particularly leading on new programme design related to the programmes for which you have primary responsibility

• Designing funder-facing communications materials relevant to your programmes, with the aim of securing future programmes

• Identifying and implementing creative ways to build the pipeline for future programmes

As mentioned above, the Programmes Manager will also contribute to other work across the organisation, depending on time and workload. This could include delivering hands-on consultancy support for NGO and foundation partners, or supporting on specific cross-programme projects.

Your first few weeks and months

Within the first two to four weeks, you will learn about our methodology for creating impact at scale, through a mix of team-led training, project shadowing and self-directed study.

You’ll quickly get stuck in with the Transform East & Southern Africa Programme, meeting the funder and delivery partner, and working with the team on different elements of the programme, which is in the landscape analysis and programme design phase. You will gradually take over management of the programme, with oversight and guidance from the Programmes Director as required. You will also be working with a junior member of staff on the programme.

If you are closer to full time, during the first few months you may also begin to work in a project team to deliver consulting, coaching and training with mission-driven organisations. You will work collaboratively with our partners and really take the time to get to know them, in order to help them determine how to best scale their impact, which could include working on solutions in any sector. 

Staff benefits

Like everyone else on the team, you’ll benefit from:

• A flexible approach to home-working, with UK-based staff being asked to come in to our London office at least once a week

• Access to a monthly budget for a co-working space if based outside of London.

• Three months fully-paid maternity leave on successful completion of probation, increasing by one month for every year of service, up to a maximum of six months

• Three months fully-paid parental leave (i.e. for partners of birth parents), with the option to take a further nine months unpaid leave. Parental leave is also available for the new matching/placement of an adopted child

• 25 days holiday, increasing to 27 after two years

• A personal training budget of £2000

• Access to a 24/7 health and wellness platform, including online GP appointments and mental health support.

Spring Impact’s Commitment to Inclusion

At Spring Impact, we firmly believe that the impact of our work is strongest when our team has a variety of experience, expertise, and insights to draw from. Our staff draw on their lived experiences and their professional backgrounds from across the social sector. We’ve got plans to grow further and are looking to add experience and new perspectives as we do so. We are committed to ensuring that Spring Impact is representative of our society at large, and is an inclusive environment for all, regardless of race, age, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability, socioeconomic background, family/parental status, and any other protected characteristics. We hope to continue fostering an environment of belonging at Spring Impact, where all team members are encouraged to be their authentic selves and where their needs in the workplace are met.

In pursuit of these goals, we not only want to cultivate a culture of inclusion and justice at Spring Impact, but to implement practices that allow us to take steps in achieving these aims. This can be seen in our flexible working schedule (for those who may have caring responsibilities or may face inaccessible transportation), de-biased hiring platform, and organisation-wide involvement in DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice) workshops. 

We encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply, especially those who may come from marginalised and underrepresented groups. 

For further information on how Spring Impact has incorporated DEIJ practices into our organisation, and what work we still need to do, please refer to our article "Embedding and Advancing DEIJ: The Distance We've Travelled and the Distance Still to Go".

Key Details

• Salary: £43,043 - £46,487

• The role is available either full-time or part-time, from minimum 2.5 days per week upwards to 5 days per week, depending on what would work best for you (details outlined above).

• Location: London (Southwark) – The post holder will be expected to spend a minimum of one day per week in the London office*. There may be opportunities to travel outside of the UK for work purposes, though this is optional. We actively support flexible and home working.

• Applicants must have the right to work in the UK. Spring Impact currently has a Worker Licence and is open to supporting visa sponsorship applications, should a successful candidate meet the required criteria.

• Closing: 2nd January 2024 at 23:59 GMT

*Our team day in the office is Wednesday, and we also ask staff to make themselves available to attend in-person meetings or workshops on other days, if planned well in advance. New joiners are encouraged to come in more regularly to get to know colleagues and the organisation more quickly.  

Next steps

Applications should be submitted through the Be Applied site. Please note that we only look at submitted CVs after we complete the blind scoring of answers. 

Interviews will be held the week commencing 15th January 2024. In the event of a face-to-face interview, in order to ensure that candidates face no barriers to attending the interview, Spring Impact will reimburse reasonable travel costs for anyone travelling from outside of London.

If you have any practical or logistical questions about the application process or role, please email info@springimpact.org. However, as part of our commitment to diversity and equity, we have decided not to offer potential applicants the opportunity of an informal conversation with Spring Impact before applying. This is because we want to ensure that all candidates have an equal opportunity to perform well in the application process. We know that many factors contribute to individuals feeling comfortable reaching out for informal conversations - including social, cultural and educational background, as well as personality and confidence levels - and we want to ensure that those with the confidence to reach out do not have more information to perform successfully in application and interview. We are driven to ensure that applicants across socio-cultural and educational backgrounds have an equal footing in the application process. For candidates offered the role, we will offer the option of an informal conversation with a Spring Impact team member to help you understand whether the role is right for you.