Job Title: Impact Consultant - Housing

Department: Investment – Housing Market System

Reports to: Investment Director

Salary: Consultancy day rate: c.£350 (inclusive of VAT, if payable)

Contract: c.125 days of work over approximately 12 months

Location: Hybrid / London, EC4A and homeworking

The opportunity:

We are looking for an Impact Manager or consultant that can support BSC’s efforts to create more safe, secure and affordable homes for people in the UK.

Social Property is one of BSC’s 4 focus areas (alongside Social Lending, Social Outcomes and Impact Venture). Our goal is to affect the housing system to better meet the needs of homeless individuals and families and to ensure there’s an adequate supply of quality accommodation for groups in need such as women fleeing domestic abuse, care and prison leavers and people with disabilities.

As an Impact Manager or as a Consultant you will play an important role in helping manage key impact projects, support the housing team to deepen their impact analysis through better tools and data and influence the impact practices of other market players to ensure the investment system delivers on our goals. 

What you will do:

The role will support BSC’s Housing strategy to grow and evolve the housing market system to address the undersupply of safe, secure affordable housing. Specifically, contributing to BSC’s systems change goal to shape the market around impact principles, including (1) identifying and promoting best in class impact investment strategies, helping to differentiate investment products on their impact characteristics; (2) Developing and promoting the use of high-quality impact management and measurement (IMM) practice to help drive impact delivery; and (3) deepening BSC’s ability to evaluate and learn from its housing investments and share that learning with others by strengthening data collection, analysis and presentation processes and tools.

The role will be both internally and externally focussed. Key internal stakeholders will be the BSC housing market system team whose knowledge and expertise around good impact analysis and practice is constantly evolving and who will be supported to utilise new frameworks, tools and guidance to improve their capacity to analyse investment propositions, drive better impact standards from BSC managers and capitalise on portfolio learning to inform decision making.

Key external stakeholders will be social and affordable investment fund managers who are delivering impact investing strategies. These will range from ‘impact-first’ managers that will benefit from support and expertise in evaluating their work, to large-scale commercial platforms who are undertaking impact investment strategies for the first time and are developing their impact management practice capabilities. With respect to BSC’s homelessness investments, other key external stakeholders will include the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and external evaluators and academics involved in evaluating social impact investments in housing.

BSC’s work in this area is led by an Investment Director who you will work closely with on a day-to-day basis and report to as line manager.

Core responsibilities:

Support on Project Management, operational implementation and technical delivery of two substantial BSC-led Systems Change and Market Influencing projects and one BAU process, specifically:

Everyone In Social Investment Pilot

• Project managing BSC’s role as commissioner of the multi-year ‘Everyone In’ Social Investment Pilot evaluation, including coordinating the advisory group, liaising with the evaluator and providing support and guidance to investment fund manager participants

• Operational management of the DLUHC grant, including completing quarterly reports and presentations to the DLUHC oversight committee. Supporting with ad-hoc Gov events, information requests and stakeholder management

Equity Impact Benchmarking Project

• Support in the project management of BSC’s sector ‘Equity Impact Project’ (EIP), as it moves into its benchmarking phase. This includes engagement with fund managers, liaising with the technical partner, and broader stakeholder management and communication

• Supporting on the technical development of the benchmarking framework and dataset

Impact Data management

• Managing the collation and storage of Housing impact data from BSC’s portfolio. This includes managing datasets, running data updating processes with the team and ensuring that the data is safe, reliable and usable

• Working with the BSC data team to build and update Tableau dashboards for impact data presentation and communication

Additional Responsibilities

In addition, the role may involve supporting the team and Impact leads on:

Impact management best-practice

• Supporting on the application and evolution of the IFC Operating Principles for Impact Management (OPIM) framework across BSC’s portfolio and promotion across the wider sector

• Support BSC to deepen its understanding of best-in-class impact practice by drawing lessons from other sectors, connecting to global initiatives and utilising impact management tools and ideas

• Understanding Outcomes’ project: Scoping a new project to develop an approach to ensuring that the collection of high-quality outcome information is standard practice in the social property investment system, including:

• Develop a theory of change and project thesis that articulates the benefits of best practice outcome data collection in the sector

• Develop a three-phase project plan and budget that covers objectives 1 to 3 (budget to cover other BSC staff time + any other expected costs)

• Identify, consult and build appetite with other potential project partners

  Internal impact systems and processes, for example: supporting team members on implementation of ‘impact canvas’ process and tool in the housing market system.

What you will bring:

Essential experience

• Experience in an impact or evaluation role (i.e. M&E, MEL, IMM) either in social enterprise/charity, impact investment or academic setting

• Experience of developing impact reporting frameworks and tools

• Experience of project management in complex, multi-stakeholder environments,

• Proven relationship building, negotiating and influencing skills

Desirable experience

• Experience in leading others through the full impact management cycle, including design, development and execution of impact frameworks, measurement tools and reporting processes

• Experience leading impact processes and management in the social investment or impact investing sectors 

• Experience of performance management in the social or supported housing sector or homelessness sector

Skills, Abilities and Attributes

Core competencies

• A passion for, and demonstrable commitment to Big Society Capital’s social mission and the UK social sector

• Self-starter able to build relationships

• Strong verbal and written communication skills

• Ability to develop close working relationships with social investors

• Hunger for continued learning and development

Technical skills 

• Strong understanding of impact measurement, indicator selection and reporting

• Comfortable with data, including use of excel or other programmes for data analysis

• Ability to be creative and compelling with data presentation

Embody Big Society Capital core values:

Ø  Purposeful –We are passionate and energetic in our work to bring about our long-term vision of a thriving social investment market that enables positive social impact.

Ø  Pioneering Spirit - We give our team the autonomy and flexibility to be entrepreneurial and creative. We have the courage to push boundaries and a restless drive for change

Ø  Openness - We listen, learn, experiment and collaborate.  And we are adaptive and flexible in responding to what we learn.

Ø  Rigorous - We take a rigorous approach in all we do.  We expect the highest standards and continually strive for excellence

Ø  Respectful - We are genuine in both our approach and aspiration.  We value each member of our team and our partners for what they bring.

Don’t meet every requirement? Studies have shown that women and people from racialised communities are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. 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.

Other terms

Location: We are a UK-based business with an office in the Chancery Lane area of London, accessible to a number of public transport links. Colleagues typically spend 40% - 60% of their working hours in the office, and the remainder from home. We hope that this working pattern encourages Big Society Capital employees to achieve a healthy balance between work and personal life, as we adapt to the needs of our diverse workforce. 

Right to work: Candidates will be required to have the right to work in the UK

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: Big Society Capital is committed to being a diverse organisation that is truly representative of the communities we serve. We therefore welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds, particularly those under-represented in the social impact investment sector (e.g. people from LGBTQIA+; racialised; disabled; under-served communities)

We are an equal opportunities employer with an inclusive environment where all employees can contribute to their fullest potential. We want every colleague to be able to deliver their work with dignity, equality, comfort and independence. Our office is fully accessible with step-free access and an open-plan set up. We are open to accommodation requests regarding assistive technologies, accessibility tools, flexible working or any other reasonable adjustments that will make working or visiting here more accessible for you. If you have a disability or other access needs and require any support to assist you through the recruitment process, please get in touch with Nica Gordon (People and Talent Officer) at ngordon@bigsocietycapital.com

Please apply via Applied by Sunday April 28th at 23:59

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As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee an initial telephone interview for all candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum criteria for the job. We are defining a disability in accordance with the Equality Act 2010, as a person who has a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. You will be asked in your Applied application whether this applies to you.