Salary: £115,000
Location: Toynbee Hall, London / Hybrid with national travel required
Hours: Full-time with generous flexible working policy
Contract: Permanent
Benefits: 25 days annual leave plus three office closure days between Christmas and New Year, and two wellbeing days per year. Staff are signed up to one of two pension schemes and a personalised wellbeing budget through Better Space.
The Young Foundation is the UK’s home for community research and social innovation. We are a not-for-profit organisation that works with communities, organisations, and policymakers all over the UK with the aim of improving people’s lives and shaping a fairer future.
Our founder, the social researcher and innovator Michael Young, laid down The Young Foundation’s roots in 1953. Since then, we have established a long and a proud history of community-led innovation, incubating more than 80 brilliant new organisations – including The Open University, The School for Social Entrepreneurs, Year Here, or the Social Innovation Exchange. Today, as we reach the middle of our ambitious five-year strategy, The Power of Participation, we continue to work in cross-cutting, open, and collaborative ways as both a “think and do” consultancy, with leading-edge expertise in research, social innovation and systems change. We want to help redesign the social contract between people, communities, state, and business. With the backdrop of a changing civic governance landscape, and the need for intentional work to sustain healthy representative and participative democratic practice, this feels like a pivotal moment. We are ready to seize it.
Key Responsibilities
This is a fantastic remit. We represent a brilliant platform for success, the opportunity to bring research and innovation together in move innovative and practical ways, and represent a chance to define the next big thing in communities and society at large.
The Young Foundation’s new Chief Executive must be a credible and influential leader, with a commitment to driving forward our strategy across sectors. They will be comfortable and confident running a dynamic, impact-led organisation, possessed of a high level of commercial literacy and a well-developed understanding of the drivers and dynamics of our consultancy business model. They will be passionate about social change, involving the public and communities in research, innovation and policy-making and energised by the many opportunities this creates in multiple social policy areas:
Strategic Leadership
- Provide thoughtful and visionary executive leadership that is inclusive, transparent, and empowering in a manner that supports Michael Young’s original vision, as agreed by the Board of Trustees
- Agree strategic priorities with the Board and lead the senior team to deliver with demonstrable impact against our five-year strategy
- Align leadership and capabilities effectively to deliver against those priorities
- Apply innovative commercial thinking and performance measurement to analyse and support strategic decision-making
- Lead an ambitious approach to the future development and sustainability of The Young Foundation providing personal leadership and regularly creating opportunities, assessing competition and risk, and looking widely across sectors to maximise impact
External Influence
- Ensure high visibility of our core mission amongst potential funders, partners, and wider stakeholders, as well as the community sector
- Nurture long term funding partnerships and commercial opportunities to meet financial and impact goals
- Be an exemplary ambassador for the work of The Young Foundation
- Work across all tiers of government and the private sector to maximise the impact of our efforts from within the charity and community sectors
Organisational Culture
- Manage and motivate staff, helping leadership to strategically grow the Young Foundation’s impact, programs, business development, and to effectively fulfil its important mission
- Drive a culture of learning, accountability, leadership and development across the SLT and staff more widely
- Ensure the continued development of an inclusive, diverse and equitable culture across the organisation
- Continually foster a culture that encourages collaboration across the organisation, identifies necessary skills and values positive contributions from all staff