Summary of role: Attracting the finest and most distinguished historians, academics, leading thinkers, and writers from the UK and abroad, the Chalke History Festival is now firmly established as one of the must-attend events of the festival summer. An exciting opportunity is available to lead all fund-raising activities for Chalke History Festival and the Chalke History Trust covering both commercial sponsorship of the festival and fund-raising from major donors, charitable organisations and patrons. Responsibility for delivering over £750k pa of sponsorship and donation income annually. Details of role: Fund-raising: Working with the Managing Director, to develop a new 5-year fund-raising strategy to build on the current platform of existing sponsors and donors to underpin and expand the current levels of non-ticket and non-concession income Identify new targets for fund-raising and build a network of potential funders Develop a new CRM system to manage all contacts throughout the fundraising pipeline Utilise the Founder & Creative Director as well as the Managing Director and all of the trustees, ambassadors and other connected parties to the organisation to maximise fund-raising efforts Manage the Sponsorship manager, the Patron manager and the team administrator to makes sure sponsor, donor and patron programmes are managed effectively Commercial sponsorship: Manage the relationship with the new lead sponsor ensuring contractual obligations of CHF are delivered and achieve high satisfaction from the new lead sponsor from its sponsorship of the festival Develop the nascent ‘Official Category Sponsor’ tier of sponsors by identifying, pitching and negotiating official category sponsor deals with major national and international brands Migrate current local sponsors to official category sponsors or maximise revenue from junior sponsor category and talk sponsors Donors: Develop relationships with existing donors to encourage continued giving and upscaling donations where possible Develop and implement a plan to target new HNWI donors and convert existing HNWI prospects into major multi-year donors Develop and implement a plan to target foundations and other charitable organisations that are non-personal & non-commercial fund-raising Develop and implement a plan to target existing and new individual donors for legacy giving Develop and maintain a donor database, ensuring accurate and timely recording of gifts and effective communication with donors Write summary reports to outline the effective use of donations, in line with the donor requirements Patrons: Manage the current patron programme including setting annual prices and benefits Expanding in a controlled manner the number of patrons Key attributes: Proven fundraising and project management ability Strong understanding of the funding process, grants and loan application Experience of selling commercial brand sponsorship Ability to sell the festival ethos, the charitable purpose and brand opportunity to prospects Maturity and presence to handle C-suite relationships as well as HWNIs Proactive collaborating and networking skills to work across diverse stakeholder groups Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite and CRM platforms Tactfulness and empathetic skills to professionally handle ambiguous and complex situations Excellent grant writing and verbal presentation skills Ability to track donor trends to increase the chance of securing project funding