About Us

Fundraising and Supporter Development (F&SD) provides a fundraising and alumni engagement function in support of King’s College London. We are proud to work with colleagues across the university and its health partners to help them serve society through world-leading education, research and healthcare.  Our work also includes a partnership in support of children’s mental health initiatives between the university’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience and the South London & Maudsley NHS Trust.

We are a committed team that brings together fundraisers working across different channels, alongside colleagues who promote King’s College London’s engagement with its worldwide alumni community. Our work is underpinned and enhanced by a range of dedicated professionals in supporting areas covering donor relations, proposition development, supporter engagement, supporter operations and business operations.

We have an impressive, well-established track record of success in securing support that allows the university and partners to deliver on their missions. This includes our global, award-winning World Questions: King’s Answers campaign, which set the standard in the sector and enabled us to raise substantial funds to help tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. Ambitious and innovative, the team has won awards such as a CASE Platinum Award for Fundraising and a CASE Gold Award for Donor Relations and Stewardship.

We are strongly values-driven with a focus on sustaining an excellent and supportive culture, which we see as key to creating a successful team that can support the university and its partners in making a real and positive difference to the world we live in.

More on King’s College London

King’s College London is an internationally renowned university delivering exceptional education and world-leading research. The university is dedicated to driving positive and sustainable change in society and realising our vision of making the world a better place.  Through its commitment to exceptional education, impactful research and genuine service to society, King’s College London is creating positive change in its communities, both in London and on the world stage. The Strategic Vision 2029 looks forward to King’s College London’s 200th anniversary in 2029 and sets out ambitious plans in five key areas: 

• Educating the next generation of change-makers
• Challenging ideas and driving change through research
• Giving back to society through meaningful service
• Working with our local communities in London
• Fostering global citizens with an international perspective

Find out more here -  https://www.kcl.ac.uk/about

About the role

Reporting into the Senior Donor Relations Manager, the Donor Relations Officer role is a great opportunity for a creative individual with a motivated and detailed work ethic to join our fundraising environment and take the lead on the project management and creation of exceptional bespoke and scholarship stewardship.

At King’s, nearly half of our bespoke annual updates for our generous community of donors are focused on scholarship and student success. These reports showcase how funds have been spent and the experiences of those receiving them, demonstrating to donors the impact of their support. These are business critical to a successful donor journey, as well as a vehicle to tell powerful and inspiring stories – and the partnership between donor relations and fundraisers is essential to delivering these in the most impactful format.

The role will project manage the production of scholarship impact reports for our donor community and lead in ensuring the timelines and delivery of these are project managed; working with over 150 individual scholars at undergraduate and postgraduate level to share their stories, develop engagement opportunities for them and their donors and work in close partnership with fundraisers to ensure that both scholars and donors have an exceptional experience of philanthropy at KCL.

This annual reporting cycle covers organising an induction event for scholars, providing a scholarships handbook, organising seasonal thank-you messages and responding to ad-hoc queries from scholars, donors and fundraisers around topics such as organising meetings, interviews and case studies.

The role will continually assess the requirements of our student, fundraiser and donor community to ensure we are providing the appropriate service in a way that is beneficial to all who engage with it. This will require the post holder to independently assess the effectiveness and efficiency of current processes, recording and analysing data and suggesting and trialling approaches to improve operational effectiveness.

The role will also feed into new resources and policies designed to safeguard and enhance the experience of scholarship recipients at King’s. They will network amongst their peers in the wider higher education sector to establish and analyse the approach of similar institutions, and work with a variety of stakeholders across the university to support the development of a policy that aims to be industry best practice.

The role will take the lead on writing impact reports on various topics throughout the year beyond the scholarship remit; and support the whole wealth of donor relations activity, being expected to pick up work including naming and recognition, bespoke gifts, visits and joining conversations on best practice.

Reporting to the Senior Donor Relations Manager, and working closely with fundraisers, proposition developers, philanthropy writers and events colleagues, the role will offer a varied and in-depth experience of King’s College London.

The role is deadline driven, so individuals should have the ability to work well under pressure, prioritise, multi-task and take initiative.

This is a full-time permanent post (35 Hours per week). F&SD has a hybrid working approach, with a minimum of 40% of time in the office. Typically, this equates to two days per week, but we’re very happy for colleagues to be in more frequently if they so wish.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Project management skills – working across multiple stakeholders to co-ordinate the delivery of scholarship impact reports
2. Creative writing skills – skilled storyteller, ability to make a story compelling, contagious and inspire action
3. Strong editorial, copy writing and proof-reading skills
4. Insight driven – ability to think about our scholarship donor journey, our scholar journey and how to improve both
5. Ability to meet deadlines, work well under pressure and deliver projects to budget
6. Strong relationship management and people focused skills, bringing teams on board with ideas and using collaboration to achieve shared goals
7. Willing to focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and ensure the team’s output and processes are accessible and equitable

 Desirable criteria

1. Adobe InDesign software experience
2. Understanding of one or more of: UK Charity sector/ Higher Education
3. Experience of using Microsoft Dynamics or similar customer/donor data base and associated processes and systems
4. Digital production skills e.g. basic video creation (through editing clips together on video making platforms)

Further Information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's. We are open to discussing flexible working arrangements, including part-time, compressed hours and/or job shares, as appropriate.

 
We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

This roles with have two interview stages, a standard skills-based interview followed (for up to two appointable candidates) by a Core Values interview.

We are not able to offer sponsorship for candidates who do not currently possess the right to work in the UK.