JOB DESCRIPTION

Job title:Head of Venture Development

Grade:50 (£47,500 - £53,425)

Area:Ventures

Line manager:Rowena Young

Purpose of role

An expert lead on venture development among early stage, mission driven ventures. The Head of Venture Development will lead the programme management and delivery of our structured programmes, including the Young Foundation Accelerator and incubation programme for our flagship Young Academy, which incubates and invests in start-up social enterprises tackling educational inequality.

The post holder will work closely with thematic teams developing innovations in the transformation of places, gender and health equality to design and deliver venture programmes, and may be called on from time to time to undertake business planning and development for in-house ventures. Accelerators can be delivered anywhere in the UK and are currently planned for Leeds, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Head of Venture Development, will be responsible for training and supervising local teams delivery of regional programmes. They will cultivate and manage a pool of freelance talent to assist in delivery. It requires the post holder to be entrepreneurial and initiate new developments and fundraise to sustain and grow programmes.

Logistics, administrative and communication support will be provided by a Junior Associate.

Candidates should familiarise themselves with the Young Foundation’s programmes and publications on social venturing – to be found on our website. See too:

Duties of the role

Delivery of venture development programmes

  • Plan structured 12 week programmes designed to improve the impact model, operations and governance of a wide range of young social ventures, from community driven to high growth organisations – our Academy and Accelerator programmes. Also to enable ventures to develop appropriate and sustainable resource models and become investment ready.
  • Drawing on our frameworks, learning resources and network of speakers, flex programmes to meet changing programmatic needs – venture programmes are increasingly delivered as part of our portfolio of projects designed to transform places, reduce gender and health inequalities.
  • Support the recruitment of local teams. Train trainers to deliver our programmes.
  • Lead the delivery of programmes, taking responsibility for the relevance and quality of learning for each cohort and individual venture. Undertake a mixture of delivering focused input, facilitating learning and working with ventures 121 to challenge and encourage them to apply the insights they have gained and take their venture forward. Conduct needs assessment and reviews with individual ventures.
  • Recruit, induct and support pro bono mentors and financial coaches.
  • Check out venues and ensure other logistical arrangements promote access and the conditions for effective delivery and learning.
  • Lead the recruitment of ventures and sit on assessment panels.
  • Cultivate, supervise and maintain a pool of trusted freelancers to regularly form part of delivery teams, adding specialist knowledge or skill.
  • Conduct regular feedback and evaluation of each programme, documenting and analysing results.
  • From time to time, support the facilitation of ideation workshops, the development of high impact innovations and pipeline of ventures.
  • Liaise closely with the Senior Associate, Social Investment, to support ventures on our Young Academy programme in becoming investment ready and accessing investment from our in-house fund.
  • Produce press and communications output for programmes in accordance with our standard requirements.

Policy and business development

  • Keep abreast of policy and practice debates in social venturing and investment, and maintain Young Foundation participation in social venture networks. Promote our role in early stage venture support.
  • Proactively manage donor relations. Ensure plans are agreed with each, and incorporated into the Venture Development Operational Plan. Prepare reports for funders in good time, participate in lesson learning workshops.
  • Maintain all administrative systems related to venture programmes, utilising the support of the Junior Associate.
  • Work with the Director of Ventures and Social Finance to draw lessons from programmes, confirm a rolling improvement plan, and formulate recommendations for the development, sustainability and growth of programmes.
  • Work with the Director to monitor issues and opportunities in social investment that have a bearing on current work or raise ideas about new interventions.
  • Work with colleagues to develop new initiatives, for example, conducting research, ideating, consulting stakeholders, developing proposals and budgets and mobilising funds.
  • From time to time, undertake consulting to venture and social finance clients, eg as part of the Big Lottery’s Big Potential programme.

Management

  • Be the accountable person for venture development programmes, project managing initiatives to meet their objectives and promote wider social change. Use a detailed Operational Plan to guide planning and reporting, including key objectives, activities, KPIs, risks, communications, donor management and reporting, and sustainability planning. Review this and a Task Finish list monthly with your project managers.
  • Manage agreed budgets and review monthly management accounts for them.

Young Foundation

While you will bring specialist knowledge and skills, all staff at the Young Foundation are employed to develop innovation with the potential to reduce structural inequalities. We work flexibly with matrix management, and where our time isn’t fully utilised, this means being adaptable and supporting other strands of work or organisational needs.

Senior Associates are given considerable independence and responsibility for leading work. As such, they are expected to be authoritative and exercise a voice in their field, have excellent project management skills and work with a high degree of accountability and 360 degree communication.

Person Specification

Essential

We are looking for individuals with a passion for tackling inequality, an inquisitive mind, detail oriented and strong interpersonal skills. In particular we are looking for people with a firm grasp of the needs of young and rapidly changing social ventures, the entrepreneurs who drive them, and an authoritative and confident approach to deploying a range of methods to help them take and make positive social change.

You will also have a deep enthusiasm for and commitment to social venturing, the development of good practice in ways that meet the needs of social enterprises.

You will be financially literate with the ability to build financial models that are both complex in their ability to reflect multiple income streams, beneficiaries and scenarios yet straightforward in their accessibility to be used by social entrepreneurs in their everyday financial planning.

You are likely to have upwards of five years’direct experience of teaching and advising ventures to have the breadth and depth of expertise for this role. You will have experience of leading the delivery of business development programmes, and will have a qualification in adult education and understand good practice in the design and delivery of teaching and learning. You will be considered very strong in these aspects of the role. You will have advised ventures in a wide range of sectors/issues and with a wide range of business models, including public service delivery.

Social venturing is a people focused sector and you should be equally comfortable working with people as with financial models.

You will have excellent and proven project and stakeholder management skills and be able to write and speak credibly and persuasively for the diverse range of audiences we work with.

A track record of raising funds from trusts and foundations, governments and other sources, bidding successfully for tenders.

Preferred

Successful candidates are highly likely to have operational or other direct experience of starting, running and growing new ventures, the practicalities and challenges of working in small, fast-changing organisations and with entrepreneurs.

They will also demonstrate interest in and knowledge of the social issues the ventures they have worked with seek to address – we believe added value comes from understanding the problems and markets ventures work in.

Familiarity with social impact assessment debates and methods, and applied experience of designing or implementing impact measurement and improvement, building evidence of effectiveness.

Desirable

Candidates will need to demonstrate they have developed their knowledge and expertise in the context of working with a recognised and high quality provider.

January 2016