Fundraising and Partnerships Lead/Manager – TITLE TBC
Reporting to: Chief Executive
Salary: TBC
Permanent
Location: Hybrid
Role Purpose
Together Active exists to design out inactivity across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent by shifting the systems that shape people’s ability to live active, healthy lives. We do this by convening partners, strengthening capacity, amplifying lived experience and using evidence to influence change. We do not deliver activities directly.
As our work becomes more ambitious and sometimes more challenging to established systems, it is essential that our funding model supports rather than constrains our role.
This role exists to shape and steward a diverse, values-aligned income portfolio that:
- reduces reliance on any single funder
- strengthens organisational independence
- supports our ability to act as a confident critical friend in the system
- aligns funding with our systems-change role rather than delivery models
This is not a transactional fundraising role. It is about securing the right income from the right places for the right reasons, so Together Active can remain principled, independent and effective.
Role Outcomes
- A More Balanced and Resilient Funding Portfolio
Together Active has a diversified income mix that reduces reliance on any single funder and increases organisational resilience. Funding sources complement each other and provide stability across the life of the strategy, with a growing proportion of multi-year and infrastructure funding. Income diversification strengthens the organisation’s sustainability rather than creating short term funding pressures.
- Greater Independence and Permission to Challenge
Together Active can play a confident critical friend role within the system. Funding relationships do not constrain our voice or limit our ability to surface uncomfortable truths about inequality, participation or system barriers. No single funder has disproportionate influence over our priorities, tone or ambition.
- Strong Alignment Between Funding and Our Systems Role
The majority of income secured supports Together Active’s core role as a systems convenor and capacity builder, including:
- convening and coordination
- system learning and insight
- capacity building across partners
- prevention and inequalities work
- influence and system change
- Increased Legitimacy Across Systems
Together Active is recognised across statutory, voluntary and philanthropic sectors as a credible and trusted system actor. Funding partnerships strengthen our reputation and widen the coalition supporting the role of physical activity within prevention, health, community development and inequalities agendas. New funding relationships reinforce rather than confuse our organisational identity.
- Clear Organisational Discipline Around Income
Funding decisions are principled and strategic rather than purely opportunity led and
Together Active has shared internal clarity about:
- what constitutes “good income”
- what income is conditional or requires careful consideration
- which funding opportunities we will not pursue
Trustees and leadership have confidence that funding choices align with organisational values and long term direction.
What This Looks Like Day to Day
The role is flexible and will shift depending on what’s emerging across the system.
You’ll have clear outcomes, but freedom in how you get there.
Some of the work might look like:
- Building and stewarding relationships with trusts, foundations, statutory bodies and strategic partners whose priorities align with prevention, inequality and system change
- Identifying funding opportunities that support backbone functions such as coordination, learning, insight and capacity building
- Working closely with colleagues across the organisation to translate Together Active’s work into credible and compelling funding propositions
- Developing narratives that explain complex systems work clearly without simplifying or distorting it
- Advising the CEO and trustees on funding opportunities, risks, dependencies and power dynamics
- Contributing funding intelligence to organisational strategy discussions
- Supporting the organisation to articulate and price the value of coordination, convening and learning functions
- Maintaining awareness of the wider funding, policy and partnership landscape
Person Specification
People build relevant experience in many different ways. You may have developed your skills through fundraising, partnerships, public sector work, consultancy, campaigning, community organising, commercial roles, or other routes.
We are less interested in the path you have taken and more interested in how you think, how you work and how you approach complex problems. When applying, you should feel free to demonstrate your experience in whatever way best reflects your pathway.
The capabilities that will matter most in this role
- building meaningful relationships with funders, partners or collaborators and maintaining those relationships over time
- translating complex work into clear and credible propositions that others can understand and support
- navigating systems that involve multiple stakeholders, competing priorities and power dynamics
- thinking strategically about income, including the opportunities and constraints different funding relationships create
- working collaboratively across teams and disciplines to shape ideas and opportunities
- exercising sound judgement about when to pursue an opportunity and when to step back
- being comfortable working with ambiguity, iteration and learning rather than fixed delivery models
It may also help if you bring experience or insight in these areas
- experience building or stewarding corporate or cross-sector partnerships, particularly where relationships go beyond sponsorship and involve shared learning, influence or collaboration
- experience working within infrastructure, intermediary or non-delivery organisations, where the focus is enabling others rather than delivering services directly
- experience of systems change, prevention, inequality or place-based work
- experience shaping or contributing to collaborative bids or partnership funding opportunities
- experience translating insight, research or learning into propositions or funding narratives
- understanding of how funding relationships can influence organisational behaviour, independence and voice