Inspiring Scotland is a registered Scottish charity and as one of the world’s largest venture philanthropy organisations has the vision for every person in Scotland to enjoy a happy, healthy life free from poverty or disadvantage. We currently support over 500 charities in Scotland and between 2023-2024 managed over £42.6m of investment in charities and not-for-profit organisations.

We are inspired daily by the commitment and drive shown by people working in the voluntary sector, and the people they support and believe in harnessing the power of all sectors and long-term funding to make lasting changes in people's lives.

One of the main reasons for our success is our people, who have been attracted from roles across the private, public and third sectors by the opportunity to make a difference and work for an organisation that is forward-thinking, and people focused. As our Part-time Finance Director (0.6 FTE) you will be responsible for optimising Inspiring Scotland's financial performance and strategic position whilst also maintaining the smooth operation of finance, HR, IT, facilities, and governance. As a key member of a small Executive Team, you will directly contribute to the strategic and operational decision-making process and ongoing development of the organisation.

You will be a fully qualified accountant with a proven track record of robust financial management gained within the private, public or third sector. With direct involvement in providing financial information and analysis to allow informed decision-making at both executive and ideally board level, you will also be an accomplished communicator able to build and maintain strong working relationships with a range of stakeholders. A ‘Self-starter’ and results-driven, it is likely the successful candidate will have experience working in a position where they have been used to taking on a range of responsibilities and balancing several competing priorities.

Above all else, we are looking for more than simply an ‘Accountant’. We want someone who shares our passion to make a difference, will fully embrace a flat structure, show initiative, thrive within a culture of flexibility, and most importantly shares our values, by being bold, compassionate, knowledgeable, and effective.

The CashBack for Communities delivery team at Inspiring Scotland are looking for an enthusiastic Communications Assistant to join the team to promote and share the impact of this unique Scottish Government funding programme.

In this role you will have the opportunity to work on a wide range of communications activities primarily, social media, website management and content creation.

About Inspiring Scotland and Creative Communities Fund

Inspiring Scotland strives for a Scotland without poverty or disadvantage. We work with people, their communities, charities and public bodies to develop solutions to some of the deepest social problems. We help essential charities to become extraordinary charities, allowing them to change the lives of the most vulnerable and transform our society. You can read more about Inspiring Scotland here: inspiringscotland.org.uk

Creative Communities Glasgow aims to support and empower communities to develop cultural activities. The programme supports 10 community organisations located within Glasgow Local Authority area to develop and deliver participatory arts initiatives involving culture and creative arts. The programme is based on the premise that cultural activity has broad, interlinked benefits for people and communities, and that a participatory approach can lead to greater impact and drive unexpected outcomes. Support is focused on communities who face barriers to engaging with cultural activities. The Programme is funded through the Glasgow Communities and Place Fund, as part of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. You can read more about the fund here: inspiringscotland.org.uk/what-we-do/our-funds/creative-communities/creative-communities-glasgow

Role Purpose

As the Creative Communities Intern, you will have the opportunity to play a crucial role in supporting our programme, working to support charities delivering community-led participatory arts activities in Glasgow. This dynamic position offers a unique blend of responsibilities, focusing on social media management, resource development, communications, and event coordination

The Fund Support Officer plays an integral role in supporting Inspiring Scotland’s autism and learning disability work. You will be curious, pragmatic, ready to learn, highly organised and have a high attention to detail. You will be passionate about inclusion and accessibility.

The Fund Support Officer will support the team as necessary to deliver against its objectives, plays a critical role in keeping the team organised and works closely with the Fund Managers.

You will spend your time working across the different strands of the programme and your focus will vary throughout the year as the programme delivery priorities emerge and develop. Your duties will include communications, creative and participatory event planning and general administration.

Inspiring Scotland

Inspiring Scotland is a registered Scottish charity with a mission is to inspire people, communities, organisations and government to work together to drive social change and transform lives. Our vision is that every person in Scotland can enjoy a happy, healthy life free from poverty or disadvantage.

We do this by raising funding from private individuals, trusts and foundations, Scottish Government and local authorities and investing in social funds addressing our strategic themes: Community, Children & Families, Youth Employability, Social Care & Mental Health, and Equalities & Human Rights.

Our aim is to amplify and strengthen the impact of organisations across civic society by helping them build their strength, resilience and reach. We raise funds with the aim of:

• providing long -term funding
• building organisations’ capabilities through the skilled input of our staff and specialist volunteer network
• understanding and scaling impact through rigorous evaluation and organisational development
• developing and supporting voluntary sector leaders
• using skilled input from local communities and Scotland’s business sectors
• acting as a catalyst for action and change with partners and contributors across all sectors

We currently support over 500 charities across eighteen social-impact funds. In 2021/22 we managed over £34.5m of investment in charities and not-for-profit organisations. We have 62 full and part-time employees.

Inspiring Scotland is a family friendly and flexible employer. We aim to ensure a work home life balance for all employees.

Current Vacancy

Inspiring Scotland is looking for a dynamic individual with strong relationship building, facilitation and project management skills to join our Link Up team. Supporting our place-focused work, you will believe in the need for social change and understand and be committed to the role grassroots community development can play in delivering this.

Our aspiration is to establish the conditions (culture, systems, processes, practices, governance, funding) which enable a sustained turnaround in the fortunes of the places we work in and ultimately, help to create a regenerative community: local people and organisations working in harmony and integrated within wider systems of support and opportunity to create a place where all can thrive.

This role will be focused on our ‘place-based’ projects in Saltcoats, Muirhouse (North Edinburgh) and Gallatown (Kirkcaldy) but will also support our wider evaluation, learning and influencing work.

Role

Job Title Place-based Coordinator

Location Your main place of work will be Inspiring Scotland’s office in Edinburgh (14 New Mart Road, Edinburgh EH14 1RL); however, you will be expected to spend 1-3 days per week at Link Up projects and other external meetings. And for Inspiring Scotland, flexible working is the norm, and is more than just working from home. As an award-winning family friendly and flexible employer, we aim to promote a good work home life balance for all employees. All our employees have the right to flexible working from day 1.

Contracted Hours Part-time (21 hours), contracted until 31 March 2024, with opportunities beyond this subject to funding.

Salary and benefits £38,000 per annum but pro-rated to 0.6 fte

9.25% employer pension contribution

Pro-rated based on 29 days annual leave plus 8 public holidays

4 x salary Death in Service cover

Full private medical insurance with option to include family members

We offer a positive and supportive work environment alongside regular training and development opportunities.

We have an active wellbeing programme led by the staff team as well as a calendar of social events and team building.

A full Job Description is available on the Inspiring Scotland website here

We’re looking for a Fund Manager to join our CashBack team!

The CashBack programme is a unique Scottish Government initiative which takes money seized from criminals under the proceeds of crime legislation and invests them in Scotland’s young people. The ideal candidate will have excellent leadership skills and the ability to demonstrate impact with multiple stakeholders including charity partners and funders.

We’re looking to hire a Fundraising Executive who will work with the different teams at Inspiring Scotland to increase our fundraising capabilities. This role involves handling multiple supporter and potential support relationships and providing information about the impact of the organisation

The aim of this role is to be the team lead on Autism, working as part of the Inspiring Scotland Understanding Autism and Inspiring Inclusion (Learning Disability) team, which works in partnership with the Scottish Government Learning Disability and Autism policy unit. This role involves managing a portfolio of charities delivering services to autistic people and working with autistic people collaborating with Scottish Government to inform and develop the policies which affect them. This work aims to achieve “a Scotland where everyone has the right to the best quality of life in a kind and caring society without prejudice.”

The Fund Manager will lead and enable delivery of fund operating plans and contribute to the development of programme strategy. They will strengthen funded organisations by informing and supporting key staff, developing robust governance processes, build capacity and influence across all levels whilst ensuring compliance with funder objectives.

Fund Managers are key members of the Inspiring Scotland team who collaborate with colleagues to share learning, volunteer their skillset to support other teams and play a role in the continued success of our organisation.

We are looking for an enthusiastic Communications Assistant to support the smooth running of Inspiring Scotland’s communication team. In this role you will provide support across a variety of projects and help deliver purposeful, creative, and engaging communications materials and outputs.

This is an ideal opportunity for an individual who would like to work in a busy communications team on a wide range of activity across a diverse portfolio.

Support and training can be provided, as most importantly we are looking for someone who is proactive, enthusiastic and team minded. Someone able to listen to colleagues’ varying needs; contribute ideas and work collaboratively to create solutions. You should be comfortable at organising your own time and adapting to priorities. You will have an awareness of communication activity and an interest in being creative and using this skill to help make communications stand out.

In this role you will work alongside the Communications Manager and be line managed by the Senior Communications Officer who are responsible for managing a wide range of activity for Inspiring Scotland. Alongside this team you will be able to work with a wide range of colleagues across the organisation and across policy areas such as equality and human rights, outdoor play, mentoring for children and young people and youth employability.

We’re looking for a Performance and Impact Advisor to support our Employability funded charities to effectively monitor and report on their performance, analyse and process performance data, inform Fund developments and produce reports for internal and external audiences.

You will support Fund Managers by helping to co-ordinate learning from funded projects, facilitate peer support opportunities, support new Fund development and wider sector development. You will drive efficiency and build and refine systems that inform continuous improvement and highlight success.

The portfolios (Our Future Now, Youth Action Fund and Building Brighter Future Fund) deliver holistic, person centred support to young people to enable them to overcome barriers, improve their health and motivation, develop self-belief, drive and ambition and to ultimately help them to move into fair work, further/higher education or good quality training.

We are looking for a caring, confident, creative, and experienced individual to join our small, ambitious and passionate team, to maintain and build supporting trusting relationships with colleagues, the intandem portfolio, young people, and stakeholders. This is an exciting role to ensure the voice of care experienced young people is heard and we use their voice and evidence from our research to make change to #keepthepromise.

intandem is a national mentoring programme, funded by Scottish Government and The Robertson Trust, offering mentors to children and young people aged 8 to 14 years old who are living at home with support from their local authority or with extended family in kinship care. intandem is a voluntary programme with young people who want a mentor connecting weekly with a trained volunteer mentor to have fun, build a trusting relationship and work toward goals. An intandem coordinator helps enable and support this mentoring relationship. intandem is offered in 19 local authorities across Scotland through our 12 partner charities.

We are looking for a motivated, relationship-driven individual with a positive attitude. The successful candidate will be an excellent communicator with both internal and external stakeholders at all levels of seniority. The successful candidate will have an empathy and understanding of the strengths of, and issues affecting children and young people and will be committed to Inspiring Scotland’s vision, mission and values.

As this role involves working with children and young people, you will be required to obtain a PVG scheme membership through Disclosure Scotland which Inspiring Scotland will process for you. We will confirm employment after successful completion of PVG membership and any other necessary checks including references. Having a criminal record will not necessarily prevent an individual from working at Inspiring Scotland. We will only seek information if the nature of the position or work entitles us to ask about spent or unspent convictions.

*Your role is office-based for contractual purposes, however this can be delivered flexibly. The role will involve travel to attend meetings and occasional events.

Benefits

9.25% employer pension contribution (salary sacrifice scheme available).

Full private medical insurance with option to include family members.

4 x salary Death in Service cover.

29 days annual leave plus 8 days public holiday.

We offer a positive and supportive work environment alongside regular training and development opportunities.

We have an active wellbeing programme led by the staff team as well as a calendar of social events and team building days.

Inspiring Scotland is looking for a dynamic leader with strong relationship building, facilitation and project management skills to join our Link Up team. Supporting our place-focused work, you will believe in the need for social change and understand and be committed to the role grassroots community development can play in delivering this.

We are looking for an experienced communication professional to join Inspiring Scotland’s small, but effective, and ambitious communication team.

Inspiring Scotland is active across a wide range of social issues and as Senior Communications Officer you will have the opportunity to engage with, and support colleagues right across the Inspiring Scotland team.

Alongside the Communications Manager and Communications Officer, you will plan and deliver a broad range of activity to engage and influence a range of stakeholders including: Scottish Charities, The Scottish Government, Trusts and Foundations, and private individuals. As a team we use our collective experience and creativity to position and promote the work of Inspiring Scotland.

The communications team current manages several online platforms including charityhealthcheck.org.uk intandem.scot.

The Senior Communications Officer will lead on developing the organisation’s digital activity, including the development of a new Inspiring Scotland website in 2023.

We are looking for someone who is excited to be part of a vibrant and effective charity which offers a culture of teamwork and flexibility. Strong interpersonal skills are essential as the role will involve engaging with people at all levels.

We offer a positive and supportive work environment alongside regular training and development opportunities.

We have an active wellbeing programme lead by the staff team as well as a calendar of social events and team building days.

For Inspiring Scotland, flexible working is the norm, and is more than just working from home. As an award-winning family friendly and flexible employer, we aim to promote a good work home life balance for all employees.

We are happy to consider a range of flexible working including part-time hours, compressed hours, job sharing, and flexible start and finish times.

Inspiring Scotland is looking for a bright and organised individual to join the team and assist us as we support community organisations in rural Scotland to design their own solutions for their local challenges. This role will run from September 2022 – March 2023.

PIMH Fund context and purpose

We know that the most important developments, physcial, cognative and emotional, have their foundations set very very early in life. Specifically in pregancy and the first few years. Leading child health experts worldwide agree that the care given during this time has more influence on a child’s future than any other time in life.

We also know that for parents, while the first few years can be the most joyous, they can also be the most challenging. It has been estimated that up to 20% of mums and up to 10% of dads are affected by poor mental health (such as depression or anxiety) in the perinatal period.

Fund Support Officer Role Purpose

The main function of the Fund Support Officer (FSO) is to provide excellent customer care to funded charities, supporting the charities at an individual and collective level to build a strong community of organisations.

You will work closely with the PIMH Fund Manager to support communications, event planning, evaluation work and general fund administration. In this role you’ll get to know the charities in the PIMH portfolio and build an understanding for how we can best support the organisaitons.

Responsibilities & Key Tasks

• Customer support for funded charities with enquiries they have and directing them to suitable resources or colleagues. Management of the Fund enquiry email.

• Administration of portfolio events (virtual and in-person) and training days, including invite and content management

• Oversight of fund communications – e-newsletters, Fund Teams channel, social media and liaison with Inspiring Scotland communications team on website content

• Ongoing management and development of PIMH services directory inspiringscotland.org.uk/perinatal-mental-health-services

Person Specification

We are looking for someone who is a people person, has a positive attitude and is a self-starter. With the move to online working, we would like someone with strong digital and communication skills.

We are looking for someone who has a pro-active, confident and professional manner who has a focus on adding value and can support stakeholders and colleagues with integrity.

A successful candidate will have an empathy and understanding of the importance of the perinatal period and will be committed to Inspiring Scotland’s vision, mission and values.

Experience / Essential

• Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to work effectively in a team (both remotely and in person) and with stakeholders and members of the public.

• Strong digital skills. At Inspiring Scotland we use Microsoft Office in particular Outlook, Teams, Word & PowerPoint and video conferencing software (MS Teams, Zoom)

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including some experience of developing and delivering communications (reports, and email communications)

• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage your time effectively and work to deadlines

Experience /Desirable

• Experience in the use of design tools such as Canva or ability to quickly pick up design software tools

• Experience in a similar role delivering a range of administrative tasks and/or customer service

• Experience of organising events (virtual and in-person)

• Effective use of social media

• Some experience of working in an office and team environment and working from home

We currently recruiting for a Communications Assistant to support our CashBack for Communities team.

About the Role

CashBack for Communities is looking for a great communicator who can support the team to communicate the Programme’s impact and grow its profile across key stakeholders and the general public. The Communications Assistant will manage digital channels – including website and social media channels – and create engaging content sharing CashBack and its partners’ news, best practice and key successes. The role will be supported by the Inspiring Scotland Communications team and line managed by the Communication Manager.

If you are interested in the work of CashBack for Communities and would enjoy creating creative content to help bring to life the impact of the programme the we would like to hear from you. This is an ideal role for someone looking to grow their experience in this area of work and can be delivered flexibly.

Find out more about our values and the way we create a positive working environment where the resources, talent and skills of all employees are maximised.

Responsibilities & Key Tasks

• Work closely and actively engage with colleagues in CashBack for Communities team to develop and implement communication plans and campaigns.
• Manage and maintain CashBack for Communities social media channels - creating engaging content and proactively planning and seeking ways to develop these.
• Manage and maintain CashBack for Communities Website (English and Gaelic versions).
• Write, edit, and design a range of materials which will include news stories and case studies.
• Use software such as Canva/ Adobe Creative Suite to create and edit content which may include short videos.
• Support the production of the annual report content and dissemination.
• Produce newsletter content and managed the distribution of this.
• Stay informed of Cashback funded partners activity and identify suitable opportunities for promotion.
• Provide support for events (online and in person).
• Support the monitoring and evaluation of communications activity.
• Maintain communications systems such as photography, case study log and print and media log, in line with GDPR guidelines.
• Adhere to policies, procedures and working practices.

Reports To: Communications Manager.

Fund: CashBack for Communities.

Delivering Equally Safe (DES) fund is a Scottish Government two year fund aimed at eradicating and preventing violence against women and girls in Scotland. We are delighted to be the Scottish Government’s fund delivery partner for DES.

We have an opportunity for a Performance and Impact Advisor to join this team focussed on the development and delivery of this fund. Our Performance and Impact Advisors need to have excellent interpersonal skills, experience of building effective relationships and working well with a variety of stakeholders. We are looking for individuals with fund management and third sector experience.

For an informal chat about the Delivering Equally Safe Performance and Impact advisor role please contact allison@inspiringscotland.org.uk

Are you motivated, relationship-driven, and enthusiastic?

We are looking for a Programme Development Officer intern to join our intandem team for a 12-month fixed term contract.

As part of our work to help Scotland to Keep The Promise of the Independent Care Review, our intandem team is looking for an enthusiastic and pragmatic individual to work alongside them and an academic to deliver a research project and other work.

You will give honest views, and build supporting trusting relationships with colleagues, peers, professionals and young people across a wide range of organisations to help inform and deliver this work. You will have the opportunity to engage with young people and build relationships around this research.

About us:

Inspiring Scotland strives for a Scotland without poverty or disadvantage. We work with people, their communities, charities, and public bodies to develop solutions to some of the deepest social problems. We are passionate about addressing inequality and improving the lives of people living in Scotland’s most under-supported communities.

We are a collaborative, supportive organisation and place high emphasis on team working and sharing best practice and learnings both internally and externally. intandem is one of 14 funds managed by Inspiring Scotland.

intandem is a national mentoring programme, funded by Scottish Government, offering mentors to children and young people aged between 8 and 14 years who are living at home with support from their local authority, sometimes called looked after at home. intandem is a voluntary programme, young people who want to participate (‘mentees’) connect weekly with a trained volunteer mentor to have fun, build a trusting relationship and work towards goals. intandem is offered in 19 local authorities in Scotland through our 12 partner charities.

The Business Process Manager will be responsible for day-to-day oversight of Inspiring Scotland’s fund processes. This includes management of different processes for fund development, monitoring, reporting and payment, charity and stakeholder engagement to ensure high quality delivery of fund management across the organisation.

They will work closely with the rest of the core operational team to support the Head of Funds and Head of Development and Partnerships deliver the annual operating plan.

The role is office based for contractual purposes however you may be expected to travel for some meetings.

Inspiring Scotland is a family friendly and flexible employer looking to ensure a work home life balance for all employees.

March 2021: The Inspiring Scotland office is currently closed due to COVID-19 restrictions and all staff are working remotely from home. We will continue to follow all guidance and open the office when it is safe to do so.