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Role Description

Reports to: Chair and Board of Trustees, Help Musicians

Contract: Permanent

Salary: £135,000

Location: King’s Cross, London office combined with working from home or other suitable location

Why do we need this role?

We want a world where musicians thrive. We offer a lifetime of support to professional musicians (and to all who work in music on matters of mental health), ensuring that where possible our services proactively empower musicians to succeed, as well as providing support when things go wrong. The Chief Executive’s role exists to:

  • Provide strategic leadership to the two charities: Help Musicians, and its single-focus mental health subsidiary charity Music Minds Matter, to ensure the delivery of charitable goals.
  • Lead the setting and delivery of the ambitious rolling 3-year business plan (including its integral income and expenditure targets) for these two charities, shaped by insight and empathy, responding with decisiveness and agility to the ever-changing environment in which musicians work.
  • Inspire and motivate the staff team, ensuring everyone understands their role in delivering the charity’s mission, and building an attractive and high-performing team culture.
  • Work closely with the Chairs of the Help Musicians and Music Minds Matter Boards, to maintain a productive working relationship between the Trustees and staff, and harness the power of the Trustees’ input and influence for the charity’s benefit.
  • Ensure the charities fully comply with all relevant regulatory and legal requirements, and have internal policies which are fit-for-purpose and underpin the team’s culture and its responsibilities and ambitions on matters of equity, diversity, inclusion and social responsibility.
  • Provide credible, trustworthy and collaborative leadership to the wider music ecosystem, as the charity’s primary ambassador.

Help Musicians and Music Minds Matter

Help Musicians

Help Musicians is a charity for professional musicians of all genres, both in work and in retirement  and exists to create a world where musicians thrive. Through the pandemic they demonstrated the value of the charity’s role within the music ecosystem, not only by reaching over 20,000 musicians with £19.5m of hardship funding, but also by ramping up other core aspects of their charitable programme to offer thousands of musicians mental health support, creative funding, business skills mentoring, healthcare access and advice, welfare services, bullying and harassment support and much more.

The charity continues to provide a lifetime of support when it’s needed most to professional musicians right across the U.K.

Committed to doing all it can to make a meaningful difference to the lives of musicians, the charity constantly adapts its range of help and support as musicians’ needs change – supporting musicians’ creative development, business skills and health & welfare needs.

Music Minds Matter

Recognising a particular need for mental health support, not just for musicians, but all those who work in the industry, Help Musicians launched their mental health subsidiary charity, Music Minds Matter in 2022, to provide a dedicated mental health support line and services for the whole UK music community. This currently comprises a support line available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and online resources, personal stories, guidance from professionals and further organisations offering support on Music Minds Matter Explore.

The new CEO will have responsibility for the leadership, development and impact of both organisations.

What does success look like?

Help Musicians and Music Minds Matter will continue to flourish as an integral and vital part of the national music ecosystem by having a transformative, empowering impact on the careers & lives of all professional musicians across the UK. This work will be characterised by:

  • Growing Reach & Impact, powered by Research & Insight.
  • Determination to deliver equitable outcomes within our own work, and more broadly within music.
  • Collaborative, influential leadership respected by all who work in music and the creative industries.
  • Income growth across a wide range of fundraising and commercial opportunities, to ensure the long-term sustainability of the charity’s significant range of services to musicians.
  • An ambitious and agile working culture characterised by clarity of purpose, role and objectives, with a harmonious staff/trustee dynamic.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and Delivery

  • Lead Help Musicians in the development and delivery of its transformative, empowering services to musicians, and to all who work in music for Music Minds Matter.
  • Ensure that every year the charities grow their Reach & Impact, with service design and delivery underpinned by a clear understanding of / empathy for the challenges that musicians face stemming from a targeted and forward looking programme of Research & Insight-gathering.
  • Collaboratively develop strategy and policy proposals for Board discussion and decision.
  • Ensure a long-term strategy, business plan and budget are in place to guide the organisations in the successful achievement of their combined objectives.
  • Identify, assess and mitigate key risks in order to minimise (or eliminate where possible) issues that might prevent the charity from achieving its mission.
  • Liaise with the Chairs of the two charities to review performance against strategy.
  • Ensure Trustees have at their disposal sufficient high quality, regular management information and relevant professional advice.
  • Attend and contribute to all Board and Committee meetings, as required.

Leadership, Management and Culture

  • Provide inspirational leadership and motivation to the Directors, Heads, staff and volunteers, ensuring everyone understands their role in delivering the charity’s mission, and are empowered to deliver the maximum possible charitable impact.
  • Take the lead in building and embodying an attractive and high-performing team culture that is ambitious and agile, underpinned by the charity’s Values.
  • Deliver continued progress in the organisation’s Investor in People recognition, with a diverse, equal-opportunity workforce empowered with clarity of expectation, regular feedback, investment in training/talent development, appropriate recognition / working conditions, and fairly-applied policies and procedures.
  • Ensure staff have the right facilities and IT environment in order to deliver the charity’s business plan objectives. In particular, ensure the charity has a forward-looking digital strategy to enable the provision of the best possible service, support and experience to those the charity engages with.
  • Take responsibility for the charity’s compliance with all relevant regulatory and legal requirements, operating with internal policies which are fit-for-purpose and underpin culture and our responsibilities and ambitions on matters of equity, diversity, inclusion and social responsibility.
  • Work closely with the Chairs of the Boards to maintain a productive working relationship between the Trustees and staff, and harness the power of the Trustees’ input and influence for the charity’s benefit.

Quality and Service Delivery

  • Working with the Director of Musicians’ Services to ensure the Charity develops high quality, evidenced based, cost effective and sustainable support services that meet the diverse needs of beneficiaries across the music industry, acting in support of the charitable objects.
  • Ensure the charities have a proportional, outcome, quality and experience measures in place that are reported through the organisation’s governance structures.
  • Ensure the charities develop and embed a quality improvement methodology across all services.

Ensure the charities have robust policy and procedure for the investigation and management of incidents and complaints.

Fundraising and Financial Oversight

  • In collaboration with the Boards, set rolling 3-year business plan’s integral income and expenditure targets that appropriately balance ambition and prudence, in order to deliver the perfect combination of growth, value-for-money and long-term sustainability of the charity.
  • Deliver on income targets for growth across a wide range of fundraising and commercial opportunities.
  • Build long-term relationships with all relevant stakeholders who can support (financially or otherwise) the mission of the two charities.
  • Ensure there is effective monitoring and control of expenditure in line with the annual budget.
  • Ensure that the charities have robust financial, informational and data-processing procedures, including monitoring and reporting on finances, impact and the identification of opportunity.
  • With the Boards, ensure there is an effective investment policy and financial stewardship.

External Relationships and Communication

  • Provide credible, trustworthy and collaborative leadership to the wider music ecosystem, attending a wide array of events as the charity’s primary ambassador.
  • Ensure that the charity’s brands and profile continue to grow thorough effective communications which appropriately position the charity to achieve its strategic goals.
  • Safeguard and enhance both charity’s reputation in all aspects of their activities.