The Head of Finance will play a key role, leading a team of dedicated and talented professionals and working closely with colleagues right across the organisation in support of delivery of our ambitious Strategic Plan.

We’re looking for an individual who is excited about the idea of strengthening processes, coaching, and mentoring individuals, and influencing colleagues right across the organisation to ensure we have robust finances and safe and appropriate facilities in place.

We have a recently-introduced finance system and new expert Health and Safety provider – so you’ll be building on strong foundations. But there’s always more to do: we want to refine how we provide financial insight, refresh the service we offer our community of budget holders, and provide meaningful specialist support to our colleagues in fundraising, and we’re searching for a new member of the team to steer those efforts.

Role responsibilities

· Build a highly effective, motivated finance and facilities team through leadership, coaching and development, creating a culture of continuous improvement, professional excellence, and customer service.

· Proactively minimise a set of key risks for the organisation, including its trading subsidiary. This includes being responsible for ensuring a robust financial control environment exists in the organisation (in line with best practice and regulatory demands).

· Provide strategic oversight for the preparation of the annual budget and the financial forecasting processes to support the 5-year financial and strategic plans and to oversee the management and reporting of restricted and unrestricted charitable funds and financial donor reports.

· Support the donor management lifecycle – working with our fundraising (Public Engagement) colleagues to ensure that we have the processes and culture in place to best steward donor funds. This includes supporting the evolution of how we budget donor proposals, how we report back to our donors, and more widely how we think of our work ‘through the donor lens’.

· Provide professional advice and expertise to the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee and other Senior Leaders by working with legal, tax and financial advisers on behalf of the Trust in matters of business structure, tax compliance and significant collaboration projects.

· Support the strengthening of the organisation’s approach to the procurement of goods and services, through the ownership of a proportionate procurement policy and set of resources and acting as an internal reference for more complex procurement queries (as well as escalating queries to external advisors where necessary).

Person Specification

Technical skills and minimum knowledge:

· CCAB-qualified chartered accountant (including those qualified by experience) 

· Working knowledge of the Charities SORP, investments, asset management, tax, and charity compliance and of commissioning work from external legal, tax and audit advisors.

· Ability to manage multiple projects, identifying conflicting demands and establishing clear priorities to meet agreed objectives.

· Confidence in departmental planning, leadership and people management and decision making and demonstrable experience of delivering results through others, with clear experience in influencing and stakeholder management.

· Experience working with donor budgeting and reporting and with designing insightful reporting more broadly

· Experience supporting procurement and commercial thinking in an organisation (or a keenness to develop these skills)

Behaviours and competencies:

· Has a passion for, and a track record in coaching and mentoring a diverse group of professionals

· Demonstrates a commitment to the values of the Trussell Trust.

· Demonstrates empathy for people from disadvantaged, marginalised or socially- excluded backgrounds.

· Models inclusive behaviour, values and leadership.

· Comfortable working in a fast-paced and high-performing organisation, combining problem-solving with collaborative interpersonal skills.

· Effective communication skills; diplomatic; effectively builds rapport with individuals and groups; presents information accessibly and in a format appropriate to the audience.

Key Stakeholders

· Finance, Audit and Risk Committee / Chair of the Board of Trustees

· Senior Leadership Group / Team

· Director of Corporate Services

· Business Units for IT, HR, Grants, Public Engagement, Company Secretary, Financial Inclusion, Strategy, and Insight

· Data and Systems Board (which brings together key business system owners and users across the Trust to ensure our data and systems work is joined up and strategic)

· Funders and Donors to the Trussell Trust

· External Advisers: Auditors, Tax Advisers, Legal Advisers.

· Regulatory Bodies: Charity Commission, Companies House, HMRC.

Our Values

The Trussell Trust is a charity that works to end the need for food banks. It is founded on and shaped by Christian principles.

Our values of dignity, justice, compassion and community, are central to all that we do and therefore supports our aim to be an organisation where the diversity of all employees is valued.  We welcome people of all faiths and none and those that are committed to these values.

We actively encourage applications from under-represented groups such as returning parents or carers who are re-entering work after a career break, people who are LGBTQIA+, from racially minoritized communities such as  Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, who have a faith other than Christianity or none, with a disability, impairment, learning difference or long-term condition, with caring responsibilities, from different nations and regions and those with a lived experience of poverty as well as any other under-represented group in our workforce. We are committed to ensuring the safety and protection of our employees from all forms of harm.