Funding Officer

**About The Role**:
We have a new opportunity for a Funding Officer. You’ll be part of a local, friendly, supportive team, led by a Funding Manager, and comprised of several other Funding Officers who cover the other areas of Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.

You’ll also be part of a wider Midlands Hub team, which comprises all the local teams covering the East and West Midlands. With almost 40 staff, it is a team that really supports each other so you will never feel alone as there will always be someone to talk to and help you.

As a Funding Officer you will assess requests for funding and manage grants using local knowledge, best practice, thematic expertise, and the experience of customers and stakeholders to improve our grant making and inform our decision making. By working closely with people and communities from a defined geographical area, you will understand what matters to them and where our funding can make the biggest difference.

Being responsible for supporting local people and communities you will have a strong understanding of our vision, our commitment to equity and inclusion and our funding products. You’ll also need to support our stakeholders, helping them to make connections that will help them achieve their goals.

Being responsible for the pipeline of projects you will need to understand and respond to the different needs of our customers by providing advice and considered feedback and be willing to have challenging but constructive conversations.

Funding Officers will ensure our grant management and assessment play an effective part in contributing to the Fund’s knowledge and learning as a grant maker. You will manage your own caseload, liaise with grant recipients, undertake project visits, identify and manage risk, supporting organisations to deliver their projects and measure their impact.

You’ll also need to work within the Fund’s policies and procedures and the necessary legislation, and in a way that is in line with our vision and principles.

You will represent the Fund within your local area including at funding fairs and external meetings and create opportunities for people to come together. You will share learning from your conversations, events, grant holder reports and evaluations with other colleagues so that we can maximise our impact.**
**Interview Date**: 25th May

**Location**: Leicestershire - Hybrid working

**Essential**:

- Relationships: Ability to build and maintain excellent relationships at several different levels with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.
- Analytical Skills: Ability to absorb a wide range of information and to make judgement-based decisions with confidence, analyse accounts and numerical data
- Communication skills: Strong listening, written and verbal communication with an emphasis on written communication for assessment purposes.
- An ability to use your initiative and manage your own workload working comfortably with competing priorities and deadlines with a can-do attitude.

**Desirable**:

- Sound IT skills and the ability to learn detailed processes.
- Knowledge of the needs and priorities of communities across Leicester and Leicestershire
- Understanding of financial planning, ability to analyse accounts and numerical data and to identify and manage risk.

**Equity, Diversity and Inclusion**

Communities in the UK come in all shapes and sizes. National Lottery funding is for everyone - therefore, we are committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and we work hard to ensure our funding reaches where it is needed.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we take a proactive approach in making reasonable adjustments, if needed, throughout the recruitment process and during employment. (This can be related to a physical and mental health condition.)