Salary: From £67,000 to £75,000, depending upon experience
Contract: This is a permanent full-time appointment
Location: Remote working
Organisational background
Reset is a national charity which works to support and promote the community-led welcome of refugees. At Reset we believe in community-led welcome as a sustainable and scalable way of providing safety for refugees forced to flee their homes. The two-way integration between newcomers and volunteers builds stronger communities that better understand each other, and helps to shift the narrative around refugees and integration. We were established in 2018 to coordinate the growth of the UK government’s Community Sponsorship programme, launched in 2016. Community Sponsorship launch. We have since developed other initiatives aimed at helping community groups to support refugees to resettle in their areas.
In a politically divisive atmosphere around refugees and migration, there is a growing consensus that community-led welcome provides an effective way to help some of the world’s most vulnerable people through safe and legal routes to the UK.
Reset is currently funded by the Home Office and the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to operate the Community Sponsorship and Homes for Ukraine programmes nationally. We support civil society organisations, faith groups and other community groups, through training and networking, to welcome and support refugee families in every part of the UK.
Our organisational mission is to: “build stronger communities of welcome by inspiring and preparing people to help refugees settle in their area”.
The Board agreed a five year strategic framework in early 2023, describing how we will achieve this, by:
- Inspiring people to get involved in community-led welcome of refugees
- Enabling strong integration outcomes for refugees
- Securing and improving pathways for welcome
- Building Reset’s organisational resilience
The role
We recently celebrated the arrival of the 1000th refugee to be supported in the UK through Community Sponsorship. 1000 refugees welcomed through Community Sponsorship!
At the start of war in Ukraine, we developed a matching service to enable Ukrainian nationals to identify UK sponsors to be welcomed by under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, as well as offering much needed training and support to hosts. We’ve also worked alongside the NHS and Talent Beyond Boundaries to provide community support for nearly 100 refugee nurses who are now rebuilding their lives and working in the NHS. Neighbours for Newcomers.
At the same time, the recent period has been challenging for the Reset team. Our response to the Ukraine crisis required intensive effort from the staff team, requiring us to scale up rapidly to meet urgent human need, and then go through a challenging restructure once the immediate demand was met. Changes in the organisation have been unsettling for Reset’s small, committed and passionate core team of 11.
Through our work to date, we have proven how effective and powerful community-led welcome can be. The next phase of Reset’s growth will be to scale our impact. Our team, our stakeholders, and our government funders share a belief that community-led welcome has huge potential. We are looking for a CEO with the leadership experience, credibility and empathy to quickly build the trust of colleagues, external stakeholders and our Government funders. Reporting to the Board, the CEO will lead an organisation of 11/12 remotely-based team members, including a strong senior management team consisting of a Programmes Manager, Operations Manager and Communications Manager.
During the initial six- nine months the top priorities will be to:
- Lead engagement with our core Government funders to help put Reset’s funding on a longer-term footing, including new potential programmes, during an election year in the UK
- Stabilising and reassuring the Reset team, working closely with the senior management team and a committed Board to ensure team wellbeing and confidence
- In addition, in building on our earlier strategic framework, there will be opportunities for the CEO to:
- Explore whether we have the right organisational structure for our future growth
- Ensure Reset is an adaptive and responsive organisation, that can react effectively to changing policy and programme priorities
- Lead the team in pursuing opportunities to diversify our income
- Extend the reach and impact of our marketing, engaging new and more diverse community groups to get them involved in community-led welcome for the first time
- Make the case for community-led welcome with political stakeholders and influencers, so it becomes increasingly embedded in the UK’s migration approach
Responsibilities
Shaping and delivering Reset’s strategy:
- Work with the Board to execute Reset’s strategic framework – developing year-on-year strategies, monitoring progress and securing buy-in both internally and among key stakeholders
- Ensure the organisation remains agile and responsive to change, in a volatile geopolitical environment
Protecting the financial viability of the organisation:
- Develop and implement an ambitious income diversification and fundraising strategy – including through building productive relationships with funders, writing funding bids, negotiating grant agreements and taking an entrepreneurial appropriate
- Alongside the Operations Manager, lead the organisation’s annual budget-setting process
- Manage an annual operating budget of approximately £500K – ensuring appropriate financial procedures are in place, that expenditure across the organisation falls within agreed budgets, and that the Board is updated and consulted on relevant matters as appropriate
Leading the team:
- Line-manage the senior management team, ensuring they have clear objectives and are delivering appropriately against these
- Provide effective, supportive leadership to the Reset staff team, fostering a culture in which staff feel valued and are able to perform effectively
- Assume overall responsibility for human resources issues, keeping the Board informed of complex or sensitive matters
Building the profile of Reset and community-led welcome:
- Build public awareness of community-led welcome as a safe way of supporting refugees to settle in the UK
- Grow and diversify the number and type of community groups involved in community-led welcome through new trialling and adopting new approaches to marketing and engagement
- Support the Communications Manager to share positive and impactful stories of community-led welcome in the media and through Reset’s communications channels
Developing and delivering operational plans:
- Develop operational plans to enact the organisation’s strategy and monitor progress of delivery against milestones and KPIs, seeking to adapt and vary plans as required
- Ensure all reporting to funders and other stakeholders is completed in a timely and accurate manner, and that learning is captured to enable Reset’s organisational approach and ways of working to be developed and adapted
- Shape and actively manage partnership and subcontractor arrangements to deliver good quality outcomes for refugees, communities and Reset
Cultivating political and stakeholder support for community-led welcome:
- Build and sustain constructive relationships with civil servants and politicians with a view to influencing the development of policy pertaining to or affecting community-led welcome
- Develop and maintain constructive relationships with other key stakeholders such as refugee sector leaders, funders and advisory group members
- Work with colleagues to develop and execute strategies aimed at building public and political support for community-led welcome.
- Represent Reset in the media as well as at external events and to the public
Shaping the development of community-led welcome in the UK:
- Engage with community, civil society and government stakeholders to understand the barriers to the growth of community-led welcome and challenges faced by those who participate in community-led welcome initiatives – as well as how they could be adapted to make a greater overall contribution to refugee resettlement
- Draw on Reset’s operational experience and expertise to advocate directly to central and local government for improvements in policy and process
- Convene coalitions and groups of stakeholders to jointly devise and advance proposals for policy change
- Work with delivery and research partners to develop and trial innovations in community-led welcome practice and, potentially, new community-led welcome programmes
- Work with partners across academia, civil society and government to expand and communicate the evidence base regarding the impact of community-led welcome
Overseeing Reset’s operations and upholding good governance:
- Ensure the organisational structures, systems and processes required for Reset to fulfil its mission are in place and operating effectively
- Actively support Board members to understand both Reset’s operations and the strategic context in which the organisation is operating and to fulfil their duties, including through preparing papers and reports as appropriate
- Manage the effective and efficient delivery of those functions that are necessary to support Reset’s operations but that are not provided internally through external organisations and subcontractors
- Ensure that the organisation complies with all relevant legal, financial and regulatory requirements (including data protection and data security, health and safety, Companies House and Charity Commission requirements)
Skills and experience
We are seeking a candidate with the ability to:
- Develop and deliver organisational strategies, including to enable teams to respond dynamically to opportunities
- Secure and manage the execution of government contracts
- Foster inclusive and supportive team cultures and working environment
- Represent organisations or social causes to the public and political stakeholders
- Build constructive relationships with grant funders and corporate partners