Funding Relationship Manager

Barnwood makes a difference. We join with the people of Gloucestershire to drive changes on disability and mental health issues, enabling people to have choice of opportunities, access their rights, and be included where they live.

As part of this work, our Funding & Influencing Team engages a wide range of people in the Trust’s vision for Gloucestershire, and our Funding Relationship Managers are integral to this.

We are looking for two Funding Relationship Managers to help award, distribute and evaluate the impact of our funding to Gloucestershire based organisations. The team provide supportive and reciprocal learning and evaluation relationships with organisations enabling us to constantly improve our grant-making processes and social change mechanisms.

We want to diversify our team to better reflect the work and communities we support – this means we would particularly welcome applications from people who: 

• are from Black, Asian and minoritised backgrounds. 

• have lived experience of disability and/or mental health challenges.   

Contract terms:

• We are recruiting for two Funding Relationship Managers
• These roles are 24 months fixed term, and we welcome applications from people looking for full time hours (37.5hrs per week).
• We offer a flexible start between 8am and 9.30am Monday to Friday.
• Salary £35,356 p/a FTE
• 36 days holiday inc. bank holidays
• These positions are based in our office in central Cheltenham with occasional opportunities for home working.

Summary of key duties:

Managing and processing grants to organisations and groups

• Process Funded Partner and Themed Funding grants to organisations and groups, ensuring that information is stored and monitored routinely, and that grant payments and annual instalments are authorised and paid in a timely manner.
• Respond to enquiries from prospective grant applicants, referrers, organisations, and other connected parties, showing consideration and patience for callers with communication or learning challenges.
• Support prospective applicant organisations and groups to apply to Barnwood Trust, providing appropriate support and advice to applicants and aligning with the Trust’s values and funding principles.
• Manage a portfolio of organisational grants, providing support where needed, and maintain a supportive monitoring, evaluation, and learning relationship over the life of a grant.

Evaluation, learning and relationship management

• Oversee the monitoring and evaluation of a portfolio of funded organisations, ensuring data and key learning is submitted to Barnwood on time and supporting organisations to collect and collate this.
• Support funded organisations to measure the impact of their work in accessible and inclusive ways, drawing on your own expertise and that of the wider Funding Team.
• Through monitoring, evaluation, and relationships with your portfolio, identify learning themes and capacity gaps in organisations in the county.
• Support the Head of Funding & Influencing and the Funding Policy and Evaluation Manager to publish impact data and learning from organisation and group funding on Barnwood’s website and social media channels

Summary of essential knowledge and experience:

• Proven experience of building and managing ongoing relationships with funded organisations.
• Knowledge of the VCS sector, and an understanding of the challenges faced by delivery organisations.
• Ability to work with and analyse data.
• Proven experience of supporting organisations to apply for funding.
• For full details please see our application pack.

Summary of skills:

• Excellent communication and organisational skills, including high level written communication skills.
• Exceptional time management with the ability to be flexible during busy periods while still meeting responsibilities and deadlines.
• Self-awareness, enabling excellent working relationships with a wide range of people (both internally and externally) using tact, diplomacy and sensitivity. Working well both individually and collectively in a team.
• Strong IT skills (proficient in MS Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WhatsApp, Teams and Zoom, as minimum) with the ability to learn and navigate new systems quickly and efficiently.

Benefits: 

• 36 days annual leave including bank holidays. (FTE)
• Life Assurance (3 x Salary)
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Work within an organisation that is committed to improving equality and diversity. 
• Competitive salaries and fantastic pension contribution rates. 
• Excellent personal development plan and extensive training which includes a commitment to training employees to be confident when working with people with a wide variety of impairments, disabilities, and mental health challenges.  
• Friendly and collaborative working culture; everyone’s voice is heard. 
• We have a range of supportive wellbeing policies and almost a third of our employees, are qualified mental health first aiders with Mental Health England.  
• Our offices in central Cheltenham are wheelchair accessible, have free accessible parking on site and great facilities. 
• Assistance dogs are welcome. 

Guidance On Applications: 

Click on Apply Now to be taken to the Barnwood Trust website where you need to apply for this role via our online application form.  

You will also find a detailed application pack which gives a full and detailed job description and person specification as well as guidance on how to make an online application and what you should include within it. 

Should you have any questions or require any of the information in a different format please email the recruitment team directly at recruitment@barnwoodtrust.org 

We want our application process to be right for you as an individual, so if there’s anything you think we can do to make this process more straightforward for you please email recruitment@barnwoodtrust.org directly to discuss what support we might be able to provide. Our career page on our website (https://www.barnwoodtrust.org/about-us/current-jobs/) has some examples of things we may be able to put in place for people who request extra support.  

• Deadline for applications: 12.00 noon on Friday 28th March 2025
• First interviews: Tuesday 8th April and Wednesday 9th April 2025
• Second stage interviews: Monday 14th, Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th April 2025

We would like the successful candidate to start as soon as possible.