"The Greatest and Best Job in The World"

Bear with me. I want you to imagine you are recruiting a fundraiser. I know, it is a stretch.

You are writing the person specification, the advert and the job description. These are all important documents that help you work out who you want and help them find you. You think about all the best things about the job, all the skills and qualities that you want in your new team member. Then you write them down. All of them.

Then, your advert does half of it's job, and people start seeing it. They see the job title and the cause. It is right up their street, right cause, right job. So they read on.

What you want them to read is the perfect advert, an advert that tells them all the things they will love about the role, the salary, the hybrid/remote options, what the job is, and who they are after.

What they see is this...

Philanthropy Manager

￡25,000-55,000 (depending on experience, but we won’t hire inexperienced people and we will turn down people who are “overqualified”, expect an offer at ￡25k and for us to be offended that you want more, we are a charity don’t you know)

Location: Hybrid and Flexible – Work where we want, when we want.

About Our Amazing Charity

According to our strategic plan we're on a mission to make the lives of people better generally. We don’t always manage it, but we do really want to. Deep down we are good folk, trying to do good stuff. Our trustees are nearly all famous, and none of them have ever spoken to anyone that’s not the CEO, and you will never get to talk to the CEO. Join us, help us really honestly try to make a difference.

Why join us? (Apart from the Money, Obviously)

• Competitive Salary: ￡25,000-55,000 plus a whopping ￡800 London allowance (including ￡10 a month bunkbed hire contribution to let you reduce your housing costs), and for some reason our budget stretches to more if you live in London.
• Hybrid Working: Translation – when you have annual leave, you don’t have to come in, but we still expect you to answer your emails.
• Team Collaboration: Because it's easier to suffer through the misery together.
• Career Development: Stay with us just long enough so you can move to the next level up somewhere else, we have no interest in hanging on to people even though that’s much better, cheaper and easier.
• Employee Foodbank: We realise that eating is expensive, so we have asked some of our executive team to bring in some of their leftovers for you.
• Employee Assistance Program: We know that we will work you so hard and so unforgivingly that you are highly likely to need this.

Your Role (The Not-So-Glamorous Details)

You're not just a Philanthropy Manager; you're a relationship babysitter. Manage a bunch of rich folks' egos, make them feel special, and hope they remember to actually sign the cheque this time. Sometimes these donors can be inappropriate to staff, but as long as they haven’t been publicly shamed it’s probably best to pretend it is just their generation.

What's Expected (Besides Sacrificing Your Wellbeing)

• Donor Management: You'll be begging, I mean, managing a portfolio of prospects and donors. Spoiler: they won't remember your name, if they even answer the phone.
• Internal Stakeholder Management: Spend quite a lot of time explaining that just because [Local Billionaire] is round the corner, it doesn’t mean that they are the fundraising priority.
• Pipeline Development: We have alphabetised a list of people who have emailed us before, and used a yellow highlighter to mark the ones who sounds like they might be rich.
• Event Coordination: Plan events that make donors open their wallets. Think weddings, but without the joy, but still with the creepy relatives.

Experience required

• Must have a Degree or Equivalent Experience: No, we don’t know what is equal to a degree either. It is essential that you went to university, spent 3 years drinking and playing rugby and learning a tiny amount about pre-Roman mono-culture farming. How else would you be a fundraiser?

• Transferable skills welcome: We welcome applicants with transferable skills, as long as those skills are being transferred directly for another role identical to this.

• We Hire on Potential: Do you have the potential to work long hours, meet inexhaustible CEO and donor demands? Then you’re the one for us.?

Career Development & Team Culture (We're Not Like Other Teams; We're Worse)

Join a team that's grown recently, we offer free cakes in the office, because we are good guys, and not because if we provide food you don’t have an excuse to have a break. Expect cross-organisational collaboration because we're all in this sinking ship together. We will ensure that you have all the tools and support you need to motivate yourself to leave.

Our Vision & Values (Because Every Company Needs Them)

• We include (as long as you're middle class and have a couple of degrees)
• We celebrate (when its Friday evening)
• We collaborate (mostly to cover our own backs)

Are You the One? (Or Just One of Many We Interviewed)

If you can bring yourself to work with a bunch of people who are just here for the salary, send us your CV, we will then send you a 12 page application form for you to print out and fill in by hand because we have the same PDF we made 23 years ago and the person who knew how to edit it has retired.

This form asks for the same information that is on your CV, it is definitely because it’s better for inclusion and nothing to do with our outdated internal systems. We promise nothing, but hey, it's a job, or could be, if we can actually get the funding.

Apply now, because we are likely to close applications when our friends have applied.

Now, this is just a tribute to the greatest job in the world. But if you want to show off the greatest and best song in the world you really need to think about how you show this off.

At TPP we offer more than just finding you candidates for your vacancy. We can help you build the greatest jobs in the world, if you will let us.

The stuff I have to include to make all this ranting and writing worthwhile:

If you would like to have a chat about how I can make recruiting fundraising professionals pain-free and straight-forward then click this link: Click here to book into my diary to see how I can help you recruit excellent fundraisers.

If you would like to find your next fundraising job, click here to book directly into my diary.

If you would like to get in touch with me at all, you can do that via my LinkedIn profile, by emailing [email protected] or calling 020 7198 6140

You can connect with me, follow me or even block me here: Frederick Hillinger

Follow TPP for lots of sector news, loads of jobs, and all the non profit sector experts you could ever want here: TPP Recruitment