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

The Operations Associate is a junior administration role which will provide vital day to day coordination for the Foundation's leadership and operations teams. This role will require close attention to detail, strong planning and organisational skills, and a proactive mindset. 

The Operations and Administration Associate will be comfortable working alongside all internal colleagues, and building relationships with external stakeholders whilst providing administrative support. 

The key areas of responsibility for this role are:

• Providing administrative and diary support to the CEO and Executive Team (40% of role)

• Providing administrative support to our programme delivery, supporting the smooth running of our activities and events (30% of role)

• Supporting the smooth running of organisation wide operations, including HR and finance administration, internal events and office management. (30% of role)

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 and Finance Officer. 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

1. Administrative and diary support to Executive Team

We have an Executive Team consisting of a CEO, 3 Executive Directors and Director of Operations. Working closely with the team, you will:

• Act as the primary point of contact for the CEO and Executive Director's schedules.

• Proactively manage complex diaries, resolving scheduling conflicts and ensuring appropriate balance between meetings, event delivery and office time. 

• Manage travel arrangements, accommodation bookings, and logistics for the executive team.

• Provide meeting support, including scheduling, preparing agendas, and taking minutes or tracking action points for leadership meetings.

2. Administrative support to our programme delivery

You will hold close day to day contact with our Events and Operations Officer, who is responsible for the smooth running and participant experience at all of our in person events. We are growing our offer to our partners and programme members, and as such, have a growing number of administrative and supporting tasks, including:

• Support the logistics of external programme events, including booking venues, arranging catering, and managing travel.

• Produce and manage event registers and attendee lists.

• Assist with key processes relating to programme partner onboarding and offboarding.

• Support data entry and ensure accurate records are kept within our CRM (HubSpot) regarding programme activities.

3. Organisation wide operational support

We have a lean backbone team, who are responsible for the smooth running of our operational functions. We strive to implement policies and processes that are clear, and reduce burden on the wider team, which in turn allows them to focus on achieving our organisation's goals. You will:

• Finance Administration: Support the Finance Officer with routine financial administration, including raising invoices, tracking expenses, and assisting with the partner payment process.

• HR & Office Management: Support central operational tasks such as ordering IT equipment, managing office supplies, and assisting with basic HR administration (e.g. new starter onboarding documentation).

• Internal Events: Coordinate logistics for internal team meetings, staff away days, and organisation-wide events.

• General Admin: Monitor central shared inboxes, routing inquiries to the appropriate team members, and handle general administrative duties to ensure smooth office and remote-work operations.

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

This role is advertised as working from home. Our Director of Operations lives in Leeds, and we would like to open this role to someone who is committed to working from a location near Leeds once a week/fortnight.

The role will not entail significant travel, but we would expect the successful candidate to attend 6 team days per year, and staff the occasional event.

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: £29,664

Interview: Week Beginning 26th April (online)