Fundraising Manager

Job Description

Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest

Salary: PO5£52,194 to £55,323

Contract Type: Full-time, Permanent

Working hours per week: 36

Application Deadline: 17/09/2025

Reference: 1810

About Us:

Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.

We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.

London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London’s Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.

The Council’s preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk so we can arrange an alternative application method.

About the role:

Are you passionate about culture and have a good network across the sector? Do you have the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm to attract external funding to sustain the development of our high profile cultural venues and programmes? We are currently seeking a Fundraising Manager to help to sustain and grow the creative and cultural offer in Waltham Forest, become more resilient and optimise our impact. Working to our new Cultural Action plan Appendix 1 - Cultural Action Plan.pdf we are focussed on supporting the more vulnerable members of our local community, and delivering Mission Waltham Forest, our plan for a more equal borough.

You will work across all aspects of our sites and programmes, identifying funding opportunities, working with team members to create and submit bids to grant giving bodies and develop individual giving and sponsorship schemes. It is also a key part of the role to lead on funder relationships and reporting.

You will primarily be based at the Town Hall.

If you’re committed to excellence and looking to make a real difference in your community, we would love to hear from you.

>> Click here to download the Role Profile <<

Key Responsibilities:

Grants: The priority will be to identify suitable funding programmes and develop bids, in close liaison with relevant members of the team

Funders: Lead on funder relationships, and fulfil reporting requirements to funders

The William Morris Gallery Trust: Work with the Director of the William Morris Gallery and trustees of The William Morris Gallery Trust to develop the potential of the trust, advocacy and individual giving

Sponsorship: Identify sponsor opportunities and develop a network of potential sponsors.

Qualifications and Requirements:

To be considered for this position, you should meet the following requirements:

• A minimum of three years’ experience of working in external fundraising and partnerships environment.
• A proven track record in securing and managing major (five or six figure) commercial partnerships and grant funding awards
• An established network of active potential supporters, including trusts, foundations and commercial partnerships
• Ability to form a strong case for support and to tailor proposals to match potential supporter and partner needs.
• Awareness of, and commitment to, the promotion of equal opportunities and the recognition of diversity
• Proven experience in managing the accounts of clients an grant funding programmes
• Use of CRM systems such as Salesforce
• Knowledge of the UK public funding landscape, as well as the private sector and understanding of the particular issues of fundraising within the arts and cultural sector.
• Knowledge of individual giving/patrons programmes as well as, crowd-funding campaigns
• Experience of working in a risk management environment with effective tracking and mitigation of risks.
• Skilled in partnership working and developing collaborative projects.
• Experience of writing reports, funding bids, evaluations, briefings or other high level communications, tailoring pitch and content to audiences.
• A good communicator and negotiator able to operate and empathise with stakeholders and project teams to influence and gain commitment to objectives.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, including diplomacy and networking, with the authority and credibility to build relationships to influence and engage successfully with potential external partners, politicians, senior managers, and colleagues in order to deliver fundraising targets.
• Ability to work creatively and collaboratively to solve problems and address challenges.
• Excellent organisational/project/time management skills to manage a complex workload, prioritise and set deadlines whilst retaining attention to detail, and cope with conflicting and changing demands.
• Good ICT skills in both standard Microsoft applications and specialist systems.
• Experience of working in an arts institution
• Experience of working in a local authority (desirable)Knowledge of Waltham Forest (desirable)

Terms and conditions:

The below terms and conditions apply to this role:

Satisfactory employment references and CIFAS identity checks;

Satisfactory declaration of interest;

As a public authority, we must ensure that members of staff in public-facing roles are able to speak fluent English. This means that they must have a command of spoken English, with confidence and accuracy, sufficient for the effective performance of their role. This requirement does not refer to any particular English language qualifications, regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations. It does not require staff to speak only in English.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications online by pressing the ‘Apply’ button below. This includes a supporting statement that outlines to us how your skills and experience make you a good candidate for this vacancy.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value.

To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy.

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.

For more information on the benefits of working for the Council, please visit https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/jobs-and-training/find-jobs-and-other-opportunities/working-us.

Contact Information:

If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Lorna Lee Lorna.Lee@walthamforest.gov.uk

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post, please contact our Recruitment Team via email at recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk.

Click here for further information on the Human Resources recruitment privacy notice.