About Smart Works
Smart Works is a dynamic, high profile and fast-growing UK charity that dresses, coaches and empowers unemployed women for success at their job interview. After visiting Smart Works, 69% of clients secure a job within a month.
The Smart Works service is delivered in 11 centres across the UK. Over the past ten years, Smart Works has helped over 35,000 women. It is our mission that any woman who needs our service should be able to find her way to a Smart Works centre. More information about who we are can be found on our website.
About the role
As the charity works to double the number of women it helps, we are recruiting for a Fundraising Events Lead to join our Newcastle team. Reporting to the Centre Manager, they will engage new and existing supporters and achieve income targets, raising vital funds across events and community fundraising to support of our mission.
In practice, this involves identifying new locations to deliver our annual events calendar including our sustainable fashion sales, and delivering our annual community fundraising campaign to target income, Cycle for Smart Works.
They will also work with our Communications Assistant to deliver engaging digital content about our events and community fundraising initiatives across various social media platforms.
The successful candidate will have good relationship building skills to ensure lasting and mutually beneficial event partnerships, and excellent written communication skills.
The role will be based at our Smart Works centre in Newcastle with occasional travel to set-up and host corporate and community events. Occasional weekend and evening work is also required to lead and support on our events calendar.
This is a fantastic opportunity for someone looking to elevate their career in events and community fundraising for a worthy cause. If you can multi-task and are a strong networker, we would love to hear from you.
Duties and responsibilities
1. Leading on Smart Works Newcastles signature fundraising events, including high-end supporter events, fashion sales, and pop-up shops, managing the project from planning to execution and ensuring income targets of circa £55K are met.
2. Effectively steward and manage multiple event partners to increase annual gift-in-kind support, clothing donations and engagement.
3. Manage all external stakeholders involved in an event, sharing event briefs with the staff and trustee team.
4. Seek networking opportunities to grow our supporter base, through community fundraising and corporate partnerships, owning KPI income targets for community and events.
5. Working with the London HQ Community Fundraising Manager, to deliver our annual community fundraising campaigns such as Cycle for Smart Works and local events such as the Great North Run to income target c. £20k.
6. Deliver an event from concept to delivery, ensuring key metrics are shared with the Communications Assistant to update our stakeholder groups accordingly.
7. Supporting the team with other income generation streams such as grant applications, corporate relationships and working with the London HQ functions for each stream.
Personal specification
Essential criteria
8. Demonstrable experience in event management and delivery, raising income in excess of £55k per annum. Event management in a fundraising capacity is highly desirable.
9. Strong relationship building skills and confidence managing various stakeholders.
10. Target driven with excellent organisation and time management capabilities, demonstrating an ability to prioritise and work to deadlines.
11. Effective project-management skills, with proven experience managing multiple projects simultaneously.
Desirable Criteria
12. Experience of writing applications for charitable trust grants is highly desirable.
13. A detailed understanding of the fundraising landscape across Newcastle is highly desirable.
14. Confident user of Microsoft Office (including PowerPoint, Word, and Excel) and digital content creation software such as Canva and Adobe InDesign, for professional settings.
15. Experience in a fundraising or sales-based role.
16. Experience working with VIPs or influencers.
Benefits, terms and conditions
17. Full-time role, based in our Newcastle centre.
18. Monday Friday with typical working hours 9 am- 5pm in line with centre opening hours. We may be able to consider suitable flexible working patterns to be discussed at interview.
19. Salary of £26,000 - £28,000 FTE depending on experience.
20. 25 days annual leave, excluding bank holidays.
21. Company pension.
22. Positive, supportive working environment with opportunities for practical training and progression.
23. VIP access at Smart Works sales, events and pop-up shops.
24. All successful applicants must provide two satisfactory references and complete a Basic DBS check.
How to apply
Please submit a CV and answer the following application questions via our recruitment portal by 6th May at 9am.
25. Why do you want to work for Smart Works Newcastle? (Max 250 words)
26. What experiences and skills do you have that makes you well suited to the role? (Max 400 words)
27. In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge and biggest opportunity in the charitable events space? (Max 400 words)
There will be a short webinar on the role held on Monday 29th April at 12:30pm. Please register to attend the webinar. This will be a chance to hear first-hand from the Smart Works Newcastle Centre Manager about this opportunity and working at Smart Works Newcastle.
Virtual first round interviews will be held on Friday 10th May, and in person second round interviews will be held in our Newcastle centre the following week.
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