Overview
- Application deadline: 9am, Friday 24th January 2025 – APPLY HERE (full info on how to apply below)
- Job type: 0.6 – 0.8 FTE (i.e. equivalent of three or up to four days a week – we are flexible for the right candidate)
- Location: Optional – remote, hybrid or office-based (see below).
- Staff benefits: 7.5% pension contribution and salary sacrifice scheme | 30 days holiday (pro rata) plus bank holidays, a day off on your birthday, quarterly development days & days off between Christmas and New Year | mentoring scheme | annual training budget | hybrid working. Full list of staff benefits can be found here.
- Salary/Pay: £38,560 – £44,630 pro rata (dependent on experience)
- Reports to: CEO
Flexibility & opportunity
We think Heard is quite a special place to work (discover more below). We aim to offer as much flexibility as we’re able to for the person in this role so we don’t miss out on talented people who have other commitments (whether personal or professional) and/or for whom a London office environment is less accessible. This is a great opportunity to work in a friendly, caring, supportive team, in ways that can offer you the flexibility you might need to do the job well.
Flexibility on your location: We are open to applications from anywhere in the UK. Ideally, we’d like remote team-members to come into the office a couple of times each quarter or as needed for attending trainings and meetings. This can be discussed. You are also welcome to work from our office in Bethnal Green, London. Most of our team work hybrid, coming into the office at least two days a week, and some are remote.
Flexibility on your hours: We’re open to 0.6/0.7/0.8 full-time equivalent (21/24.5/28 hours per week excluding lunch break), Mon-Fri. We’d expect you to work most/all of your hours during the daytime to ensure enough crossover with team-members. We can be flexible about exact timings (e.g. to allow for childcare pick-ups).
Accessing this recruitment process: If you require any reasonable adjustments during our recruitment processes, including assistance with reading this page or sending documents, please contact info@heard.org.uk (please note the Heard office is closed from 25th December – 1st January inclusive).
About Heard
Heard is a multi-award-winning small charity, working with people, the media and other organisations to inspire content and communication that changes hearts and minds. We’ve spent 15 years constantly developing the best approaches.
Every year, as a result of our work, tens of millions of people hear stories about issues such as poverty, climate change, migration, domestic abuse, sexual violence, transgender experiences, and children’s palliative care.
We’re shifting public understanding of these issues. We scale our impact by collaborating with others. Together, we inspire people to take action.
You can learn more about our team and culture, and whether you’d be a good fit for Heard, further down this job pack.
Job brief
We’re looking for someone who can bring management accountancy skills and experience to this role, with experience within the charity sector. We’d like you to help us manage our budgets and forecasting, ensure we have good systems in place to support our programme leads with their budgets, and ensure we always feel on top of our financial health and management accounts.
You’ll be supported by our excellent operations and finance coordinator, Jay, and you have the option of additional support from a part-time bookkeeper (we can discuss this). You will work closely with our CEO and executive team, as well as our programme leads on their budgets. You’ll report in to the CEO.
Key responsibilities
Processes & systems:
- Oversight of our financial processes and systems (mostly day-to-day managed by our operations & finance coordinator and/or bookkeeper)
- Ownership of our financial controls & reconciliations
- Payment of suppliers, staff, and volunteer expenses and remittance notifications.
- Maintain financial records and filing systems, ensuring they are ready for annual audit
- Ensure robust systems are in place for managing cashflow
- Review of financial procedures to ensure they are suitable to provide financial control and security and that they are being followed at all times
Management accounting tasks and team support:
- In hand with the CEO, ownership of the management accounts, including preparing monthly management accounts
- Organisational budgeting/forecasting
- Identifying financial gaps and risks in good time, so the CEO and executive team can explore resourcing options and fundraising needs
- Supporting budget holders with finance info for reports to funders
- Identifying where our team (especially budget holders) may have gaps in financial knowledge and providing/identifying training to help us become more financially literate across the organisation
- Help set / monitor financial KPIs
Governance and managing risk:
- Supporting the board with financial reports on at least a quarterly basis
- Leading the board’s finance subcommittee to manage risks and opportunities, including producing summary reports each quarter
- Keeping the board abreast of financial risks and, in hand with the CEO, proposing solutions for how we might counter them
- Overseeing our statutory requirements – e.g. liaising with supplier to complete statutory accounts and financial audit, ensuring compliance with SORP
- Advising the board on our approach to reserves and investment, including monitoring reserves
- Advising the board on the financial impact of significant strategic and operational decisions (e.g. costing out a cost-of-living increase across all salaries, costing out the introduction of a new policy, highlighting financial risks of strategic decisions)
- Monitor if/when we need to become VAT-registered (we are already tracking this)
Skills and requirements
Essential:
- Part qualified CIMA / ACCA / ACA and/or AAT
- Strong management accounts and core accountancy experience
- Experience of managing financial systems
- Experience of working on finance within a UK charity and/or in-depth understanding of the nuances of charity finance (e.g. through a charity treasurer role or certification)
- You will need sufficient charity-specific knowledge to liaise effectively with the financial accounting function and suppliers
- Experience of producing detailed departmental and consolidated management accounts, including analysis and commentary
- Enjoys working with others and “demystifying” finance. Explainer: budgets can sometimes feel overwhelming and a bit scary to non-financial people, and we hope that you can guide our team to feel more confident and comfortable in their financial literacy
- Can communicate clearly and respectfully with the team about what’s needed from them, to maintain good financial health across the organisation
- Can communicate comfortably and clearly with the executive team and board, especially to highlight any financial risks, as well as opportunities to improve our financial health (they are all very friendly!)
Desirable:
- Experience of advising a senior management / executive team
- Familiarity with SORP
- Experience of using QuickBooks (we are open to a move to a different system if you saw fit)
- Experience of using Salesforce
- Experience of helping a charity become VAT registered or understanding of how this process might happen
- Experience of a charity that generates part or most of its income from trusts and foundations
- Experience of a charity that has sought to increase its income from trading/sales/consultancy and/or otherwise diversify its income streams
- Experience of advising a charity board
What’s in it for you? Would you be a good fit for team Heard?
We’re a team made up of women and non-binary people from different backgrounds, and we welcome all. We have brave conversations around racism, islamophobia and transphobia. Our determination, creativity and strategic communications expertise makes us well positioned to have these conversations in a thoughtful way. We know diverse teams and communities make us stronger, and we won’t stand for hateful and divisive rhetoric. As part of this role, you’ll need to be enthused about – and sensitive to – working with trans and non-binary people, people from migration backgrounds, people experiencing poverty and others experiencing marginalisation and oppression.
Values: a bit about us
Here’s most of our team at our end-of-year celebration (Dec 2024) – what a friendly bunch!
This is our team, and this is the work we do. These are our values at Heard: we’re inclusive, thoughtful, patient, creative, determined, and brave.
When we’re adding members to the team this is what we’re looking for. Someone who is…
- Personally committed to Heard’s mission, vision and values, and collaboration-focused method of work.
- Committed to reflection and learning, including sharing failures and uncertainties; openly giving and receiving feedback to/from the team and members of the community.
- Awareness of your own needs: you will be good at knowing your limits under pressure and will be confident to ask for help when you need it. You will receive support from your team – we’re keen to nurture an environment where no one feels worried about asking for help or support when they need it.
- You’ll be interested in emotional intelligence and empathising with and appreciating others. You’ll be keen to explore and grow and to create opportunities for those you work with to do the same.
How you’ll be supported
As a Heard team member, you will have:
- Regular check-ins with your manager – an opportunity for you to share feelings and experiences about your work, alongside feeding into a well-being and welfare staff framework.
- Mentoring – each staff member is set up with an external mentor after the 6 month probation period.
- Training opportunities – alongside the team-wide training you have, you will also have a £400 personal training budget per year. We also try our best to access training opportunities through our funders for staff where possible and encourage staff to attend events.
Staff benefits: 7.5% pension contribution and salary sacrifice scheme | 30 days holiday plus bank holidays, a day off on your birthday, a quarterly development day & days between Christmas and New Year | mentoring scheme | annual training budget | and hybrid working.
Full list of staff benefits can be found here.
