The Reach Foundation
Events and Operations Officer
About The Reach Foundation
Our ambition is for every child to live a life of choice and opportunity.
The good news is that we know exactly what every baby, child and young person needs to thrive; the bad news is that we are not securing these conditions for millions of children in England right now. This is not a sporadic, isolated, endemic problem affecting a minority of children but a persistent, widespread, systemic issue necessitating system change.
At The Reach Foundation, we seek to address this by pursuing system change through local action; empowering leaders to build powerful partnerships to ensure every child can enjoy a life of choice and opportunity.
Working in partnership with community leaders, existing institutions and local professionals, we have shown that it is possible to improve children’s outcomes across a range of domains—including personal safety, well-being, education and social relationships—while enhancing the capacity of children’s families and their communities to sustain better outcomes in the long-run.
Locally, we have developed an innovative, high-impact Cradle-to-Career model in Feltham—a historically under-resourced area of southwest London.
Nationally, we are working with around 40 school trusts in England—from Teesside in the North East to Newquay in the South West—to establish ‘cradle to career’ models and deliver programmes that cultivate the next generation of leaders for schools and trusts. We do this work through our Cradle to Career partnership and our school and trust leadership programmes.
Role Overview
We are looking to appoint an Events and Operations Officer, who will be responsible for managing programme operations and delivering events across the Reach Foundation.
You will be responsible for working closely with the Director of Operations and Leadership Team to ensure our programmatic events are delivered to a high standard. We are looking for someone who cares deeply about our ambitious plans, and who has the skills to build relationships across the team, whilst also being able to independently take action to deliver operational tasks. A key element of this role is to manage a calendar of events running concurrently, and across varied programmes, therefore we are looking for someone who has experience managing multiple projects simultaneously.
Your work will be central to enabling our continued growth, directly supporting the development of strong partner relationships and shaping the experience they have across our programmes, so that they can deliver excellent outcomes for babies, children and young people.
The role of the Events and Operations Officer has two core areas of responsibility:
Programme Planning and Delivery. You will set the annual delivery calendar, and programme milestones. You will work closely with Regional Directors to ensure tasks are delegated and completed in line with programme objectives.
Event Coordination. You will work closely with Regional Directors to ensure all event logistics are in place. This includes making all event related bookings, supporting communications, managing event data and ensuring great programme member and partner experiences.
The Event and Operations Officer will be comfortable building relationships and partnerships across both external providers and internal colleagues. They will be a champion of our use of technology, whilst maintaining our desire to work relationally. This role will require close attention to detail, strong planning and organisational skills, and a proactive, delivery-focused mindset.
Team Overview
The role sits within our Operations Team, reporting to the Director of Operations.
We are growing and strengthening our Operations Team, consisting of the Director of Operations, Events and Operations Officer, Programme Operations Officer, Finance Officer and Operations and Administration Associate. Our remit is to ensure the smooth running of our organisation, through developing robust systems, efficient processes, accurate data management, and effective support for our programmes and partners.
This role will also contribute within a new cross-organisational circle that brings together colleagues from operations, communications and evaluation to share insights and support the ongoing development and quality of our programmes.
Duties
Programme Planning and Delivery
Work across teams to complete the annual calendar setting process, setting programme dates and allocating delivery staff to all activities
Work with colleagues to drive effective forward planning and continuous improvement of our programmes. This will include setting programme milestones, ensuring tasks are delegated, completed and tracked in line with agreed timescales.
Utilise effective systems or software to best plan and monitor programme delivery progress.
Deliver key tasks on behalf of the team, such as procuring supplies, writing communications, making bookings
Ensure that the team is compliant with internal processes, such as finance processes, risk management and procurement.
Champion use of HubSpot, our CRM tool, in its inaugural year of implementation.
Work across teams to complete the annual calendar setting process, setting programme dates and allocating delivery staff to all activities
Work with colleagues to drive effective forward planning and continuous improvement of our programmes. This will include setting programme milestones, ensuring tasks are delegated, completed and tracked in line with agreed timescales.
Utilise effective systems or software to best plan and monitor programme delivery progress.
Deliver key tasks on behalf of the team, such as procuring supplies, writing communications, making bookings
Ensure that the team is compliant with internal processes, such as finance processes, risk management and procurement.
Champion use of HubSpot, our CRM tool, in its inaugural year of implementation.
Event Coordination
We run over 300 events across our programmes and other activities. They include residentials, school study tours, conferences and webinars. Events are located across our geographical regions. You will have oversight of our full events calendar, managing the end to end planning and delivery of each event across all of our programmes.
Work with Regional Directors to ensure all event logistics are in place. This includes:
Making sure all event venues are booked
Travel and accommodation booking
Invoices are submitted
Supporting with communications to participants, dealing with queries and ensuring excellent customer service
Regularly speaking to suppliers and manage relationships with them, being the point of contact for any issues or escalations as needed
Monitor event budgets, working closely with the budget holder to ensure event spend comes in on track
Champion the importance of delivering inclusive events, embedding good practice into the team’s delivery
Attend events, with a willingness to travel across the country if required
Personal Specification
Working at The Reach Foundation
Our Values
Here are the Reach Foundation, we have a set of lived values that guide our work;
Rigour. We are clear slighted about the challenges babies, children and young people face. We use the best available evidence to inform our work, strive for excellence in all we do and support each other to attain this.
Relationships. We invest in building the strong relationships needed to tackle challenging, complex problems.
Intentionality. The most important decisions we make are about how we use our time and energy. We evaluate our work and think very carefully about what we start, stop and continue doing.
Action. We have a strong bias to action. We believe that also long as we learn and adapt and work with others, we can make positive change for babies, children and young people.
Justice. We are working to create a more socially just world. The way we work should always support that goal.
How we work
The role will not entail significant travel, but we would expect the successful candidate to attend 6 team days per year, and attend events that happen across the country on a fairly regular basis.
We adopt an agile working policy, and believe great work happens when people feel trusted, connected, and able to adapt to what the day asks of them. In practice, agile working to us means:
We expect you to fully deliver your work. Our commitments and deadlines to each other and our partners matter, and work is completed on time and to the standard our team agrees on.
You are trusted to organise your day thoughtfully, meaning you can start early or finish later, take a longer lunch break, or work from home.
We expect you to communicate regularly. A remote team relies on connection, therefore we expect you to keep your team in the loop, share challenges and be open to shifting plans if needed.
Ultimately, we believe blending responsibility with flexibility means you are able to bring your best self to work.
Our Commitment to Inclusion
We believe that we can't tackle the complex challenges facing babies, children, and young people, without catalysing action that draws from diverse perspectives and is led by a wide range of voices. We are therefore committed to an inclusive world where every voice, experience, and background contributes to our shared goal of a more socially just future for all - within, around and beyond our organisation.
As we seek to build a team as diverse as the communities we serve, we actively encourage applications from anyone who feels their skills, experience and motivations could serve well in this role. We strongly encourage those with varied lived experiences, disciplines and identities to apply.
Other Details
Salary
£45,175.83 (Full Time Equivalent) Pro-rata’d based on 0.6FTE would be £27,105.50
Hours of Work
0.6 FTE - 24 hours per week, with the scope for negotiation. The role will ideally work as a job share with an existing staff member.
Location
Flexible. Reach Foundation Offices are located at Axiom House, Feltham, TW13 4AU.
This role can either be office based, based at home, or hybrid. We currently have staff based in Feltham, London, Cornwall, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
Interviews
Week Beginning 20th April
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