About Us
The National Lottery Community Fund is the largest funder of community activity in the UK – we support people and communities to prosper and thrive.
National Lottery players raise an incredible £30 million a week for good causes. This money funds projects and activities that transform communities, protect our heritage and enrich lives through arts, sports and culture. We are proud to be one of 12 distributors responsible for awarding this funding across the UK.
Thanks to National Lottery players, last year we were able to award over half a billion pounds of life-changing funding to UK communities, supporting thousands of projects making a real difference to people’s lives.
Over eight in ten of our grants were for under £10,000 going to grassroots groups and charities across the UK doing great things to support their communities, during a particularly tough time.
We also distribute non-National Lottery funds, working closely with Government on funding for important issues, such as tackling loneliness, multiple and complex needs, mental health and distributing Dormant Accounts money.
Over the last five years we’ve awarded a total of £3.4 billion, of which £2.7 billion is National Lottery money.
We fund things that matter – whether helping communities respond positively to national, regional or local priorities, or helping the UK achieve its big social ambitions. Our grants range from £500 up to multi-million-pound programmes – supporting people and projects to do extraordinary things and bring great ideas for their community to life.
About the Role
As part of our Knowledge and Learning Team here in Scotland, you will work collaboratively with both internal and external stakeholders to share learning from the Community Fund’s work, as well as shape funding decisions, priorities, policy and strategic direction.
Working with our Head of Knowledge and Learning, and our four Knowledge and Learning officers, you will be a dynamic and confident communicator, with excellent research and management skills. You will be passionate and knowledgeable about different ways to gather data and evidence, and how it can be used to shape learning and inform decision making. You will have technical experience of designing, conducting and managing research or evaluations, as well as the people and project management skills required to gather high quality and robust learning and evidence. You will have excellent analytical and report writing skills, which you can flex to meet the needs of different audiences including our staff group, grant holders, our wider stakeholders.
You will need to be proactive and collaborative in identifying where, and how, to most usefully share our knowledge and learning and part of this role will involve deepening and strengthening our external engagement with the wider third sector in Scotland from grassroots organisations to local and national government. You will be curious to explore more about changes to service delivery post covid and the different approaches being adopted across the sector, as well as exploring new ways of engaging with stakeholders. You will have experience of equity, diversity and inclusions issues, particularly as they relate to our work, the wider third sector and the policy environment in Scotland.
You will have strong relationship management skills, and genuinely enjoy working with others. You will be a confident and engaging communicator in presenting our work, and representing the fund, at conferences, parliamentary events and meetings (both online and virtually). You should be proactive in identifying, designing and planning events with excellent facilitation skills to support learning and engagement, both internally and externally.
This is an exciting time to join The Fund in Scotland, and the need to support colleagues and the wider third sector, by providing and sharing high quality evidence, has never been greater. We are currently in the process of undertaking a review of our portfolio to inform future decisions on what we fund, where and how. You will be expected to take a lead role in this process in terms of designing, managing and implementing the review process. You will work collaboratively with colleagues across the fund, and have the ability to think strategically to determine how best to utilise the information we have to support senior decision making.
This role will also provide strategic support to the Management Team Scotland in better understanding how and where we can identify emerging policy trends across Scotland and provide relevant briefings, consultation responses etc. You will also be expected to produce high quality research and evidence briefs for the management team. You will also share this evidence to increase our profile, and usefully share learning about our funding in Scotland with key stakeholders (including the Scottish Government).
Essential Criteria
You will need to demonstrate your experience, knowledge and skills in these areas:
Desirable Criteria
For You
We seek to develop our staff and offer a wide range of personal development opportunities.
We offer a wide range of generous benefits including:
Interview Date: w/c 28 March 2022
Visit our website on tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/jobs for further details about the vacancy and our application process.
Equal Opportunities
We believe our people should represent the communities, organisations and individuals we work with. As such we particularly welcome applications from people with disabilities, Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, LGBTQ+ and from different socio-economic and educational backgrounds.
Equality, diversity and inclusion in our grant-making, and amongst our people, are all vital to our success in supporting people and communities to thrive. We believe our people should represent the communities, organisations and individuals we work with. We are committed to being an inclusive and great place to work, and recognise our people come from diverse backgrounds. We are a Disability Confident employer and positively welcome applications from disabled people.