Please note this is a hybrid role based on the successful candidate working at least two days a week in our London office. Remote contracts would not be considered for this role.

PURPOSE OF JOB:  

As Head of Campaign Strategy & Planning you’ll play a critical role in defining the fundraising strategies for cross organisational campaigns and targeted fundraising and engagement activities.  Working as the lead fundraising strategist in the Fundraising Team, you’ll direct cross-disciplinary project teams to deliver target beating initiatives from Red Nose Day to new product development initiatives that drive new revenue streams and / or attract new audiences.  You’ll also directly line manage a team of business and creative strategists and planners, coaching and mentoring them to direct other x-organisational project teams.  You’ll establish data and insight led planning processes, ensuring strategies are well informed and robust.  You’ll ensure test and learn is embedded in any project and that rigorous analysis is built into measurement and evaluation processes.  You will have planning oversight of the full suite of fundraising projects/campaigns across the organisation and will play a critical role in ensuring the organisation is pulling in one direction to drive success. 

 Interview are expected take place on the w/c July 24th.

Key responsibilities:  

• Work with colleagues across the Fundraising team to inspire a high performance culture and ambitious approach to fundraising 

• Business partner with the Head of Public Activation & Individual Giving and Head of Schools, Youth & Communities, and colleagues within Partnerships, to define annual fundraising and engagement plans, taking a lead on establishing planning; monitoring and evaluation processes for agreed activities, specifically but not limited to organisational campaigns and critical income driving initiatives. 

• Line manage, coach and mentor a team of data, insight, audience and creative strategists who will lead and participate in cross-organisational multi-disciplinary project teams to robustly plan and deliver agreed campaigns and projects. 

• Directly lead agreed cross-organisational multi-disciplinary project teams to robustly plan, deliver, monitor and evaluate agreed campaigns and projects. 

• Define and implement an agreed fundraising planning process, ensuring campaigns and project strategies are developed using internal and external knowledge, data and insight; are planned in good time to deliver maximum impact and are responsive to audience and market requirements and trends. 

• Inspire and facilitate creative and innovative thinking and action, working with colleagues, including our Innovation Lead, to ensure our fundraising campaigns and projects deliver against our disruptor brand characteristics and speak to new external innovations appropriate to target audience segments 

• Devise and / or make use of a suite of data and insight tracking and reporting tools that are leveraged to drive optimisation and efficiency as well as informing new approaches to maximise supporter acquisition, development and retention and associated income opportunities 

• Work closely with audience teams and activity owners to measure performance and to assess and communicate the results of campaigns and projects including retrospectives to aid continuous improvement.   

• Provide training and ongoing support for teams and individuals in best practice planning and strategic development approaches. 

• Deliver ad-hoc planning and strategy projects as required  

• Play an active role in the Fundraising Team, working collaboratively to enable inclusivity and diversity in order to drive high performance and an action-oriented culture 

People management 

• Proactively undertake business planning, prioritise activities and ensure clear and realistic objectives based on capacity, expertise and aspirations are set across the Campaign Strategy and Planning team. 

• Provide balanced, constructive feedback, undertake effective performance management to embed accountability and proactively support the professional development and growth of staff within the team. 

• Maintain regular two-way communication and dialogue with direct reports, ensuring information is cascaded and escalated as needed. 

• Model an enabling, inclusive and empowering leadership style that builds a values-based culture throughout the charity. 

Person Specification  

 Essential Criteria  

• A deep understanding of fundraising, having devised and implemented successful fundraising strategies and initiatives in a high impact organisation 

• Extensive experience of analysing and using data, audience and creative insights to inform decision making; with proven abilities in complex financial modelling and interpretation of data and insight into actionable plans and initiatives 

• Knowledge of segmentation and audience targeting strategies, including proven experience of using audience listening and audience targeting tools and services to define an audience first approach to planning initiatives 

• Experience of planning; monitoring and evaluating major campaigns or projects, incl financial modelling, objective and KPI setting and preparing relevant documentation that underpins the delivery of activities 

• Experience of line managing, coaching and developing others, as well as leading cross-disciplinary teams in a matrix management approach 

• Knowledge of fundraising; creative and project management methodologies and experience of working with different approaches to project planning and delivery 

• Experience of monitoring and evaluation of programme performance, including objective setting, developing toolkits, reporting and driving the learning process with stakeholders to achieve ongoing effectiveness  

• Ability to understand risks, issues and dependencies within a project / campaign and to synthesise this information to provide accurate and timely advice to drive decision making 

• Effective relationship builder with strong stakeholder management and communication skills, and the ability to adapt to different styles and ways of working 

Desirable Criteria  

• Experience of leading multi-channel fundraising programmes 

• Experience of fundraising for international and national causes 

• Accredited fundraising or marketing qualification 

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Comic Relief we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.