Contract Type: Permanent
Role Type: Employment
Hours: Full time
Application deadline: Friday, January 30, 2026 - 00:00
Based: Gateshead
Salary: £35,550
Salary Type: Fixed Salary
Location: Tyne and Wear
Role description: Manager
OUR PURPOSE Changing Lives supports people facing the most challenging of circumstances to make positive and lasting change in their lives.
Job Title Bid Manager
Project Business Development
Band / Tier / Level Service Manager Band
Reporting to Business Development Lead
Direct Reports 0
Location Flexible
Salary Band £35,550
FTE / Working Hours Full-time
Overall Role Purpose
Under the direction of the Business Development Lead, a Bid Manager will be responsible for supporting the design, positioning and bidding for new and existing business in line with Changing Lives’ strategic priorities and growth plans.
The role will work alongside a team of Bid Managers and Bid Writers, focusing on a new strategic vision together. Changing Lives supports people within the following themes: Housing and Homelessness, Women, Recovery and Wellbeing, Employment and Criminal Justice.
Within this role we welcome agile working, flexible working hours, including condensed hours.
This is a role that requires an ability to produce high quality work across a number of competing deadlines.
Impact and Dimensions
Contribution to the delivery of Changing Lives’ Strategic and Business Development Pipeline by leading on bids for new opportunities and re-commissioning of existing work.
Co-ordination and completion of tender submissions to Local Authorities and other commissioning bodies, and grant applications to charitable Trusts and Foundations. This will include engagement in and facilitation of internal and external meetings across the country to support business development activity.
Creation of a collaborative, innovative and proactive working environment.
Key Activities
* Operate as an expert lead in bid management activity throughout Changing Lives.
* Explore and assess viability of new business opportunities.
* Work proactively with operational teams, corporate services support functions, and partner organisations to position Changing Lives to retain and win contracts.
* Co-ordinate service delivery model development in collaboration with operational teams.
* Enable involvement of people we support and people with lived experience in the model development process: to ensure their aspirations, needs and views are the foundations of our thinking and model development.
* Lead the budgeting process associated with bids, in collaboration with the Finance Team.
* Work with the Business Development Lead to support development of external partnerships to explore potential for collaborative bids and action accordingly.
* Support the Business Development Lead to build trusted, collaborative and robust relationships with commissioners and funders to support business development activity.
* Produce and quality assure all bids ensuring they are accurate, deliverable, written to a high standard to maximise our chance of success, and representative of Changing Lives’ vision, values and practice.
* Proactively develop and manage a network of subject matter experts by liaising with other departments and staff in a timely and structured fashion to gather all information necessary to prepare for and submit bids.
* Contribute to the development and maintenance of a bid library of written responses to support production of bids and proposals, in collaboration with operational and corporate teams.
* Contribute to our strategic approach to grants from charitable trusts and foundations, and share knowledge on grant making with the wider team.
* Ensure quality of bids and contribute towards the quality assurance process. This includes:
o Actively and continually review bid feedback from all sources: consider, plan and execute improvement planning processes.
o Critically review bids written by business development colleagues
* Ensure records of opportunities, bids submitted and our pipeline are regularly updated.
* Manage documents relating to Business Development activities appropriately including version control.
* Write within the Changing Lives specific tone of voice and in-house style.
* Comply with all legal and health and safety requirements.
* Promote Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at all times.
* Understand and follow relevant Changing Lives’ policies and procedures at all times.
* Present a professional image of Changing Lives at all time and work to the performance standards provided by Changing Lives.
* Carry out any other reasonable duties.
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