Head of Impact

Head of Impact | Education/Philanthropy | London-hybrid | £50k-£60k

Our exclusive client runs a charitable fund alongside its core organisation - one that's already put real money behind disadvantaged young people, and is now looking for someone to take it from "well-run" to "genuinely ambitious." That's this role.

You'll set strategy directly with the CEO and the trustee board, then go and build the funding relationships - banks, consultancies, foundations, major donors - that make that strategy fundable. You'll also design what the impact actually looks like on the ground, including new AI-enabled delivery models for under-resourced schools. And underneath all of it, you're the person keeping governance and the books airtight enough that none of the above is at risk.

It's an unusual mix: part strategist, part fundraiser, part governance lead, and - because the Fund's delivery model increasingly runs through the organisation's own AI-tutoring technology - part product collaborator too. Most people are strong at one of those. This role needs someone credible across all of them.

Mission comes before everything else here. Our client doesn't treat "passionate about impact" as a nice-to-have line on a CV - they're looking for someone who's genuinely bought into closing the gap between where a young person starts and what they're capable of, and who'd be doing something in this space even if this exact job didn't exist. That conviction has to be real enough to survive a hard trustee conversation or a funder who says no, not just a values-fit answer in an interview.

• Setting the Fund's strategy directly with the CEO and Trustees - genuinely weighing the options on the table, not just executing a plan handed down to you
• Designing how impact actually lands on the ground, including new AI-enabled delivery models, and working cross-functionally with product and engineering so the technology and the mission stay pointed at the same target
• Building funder relationships from a cold start to committed - banks, consultancies, foundations, major donors - and shaping what they're already doing into propositions that get grant applications over the line
• Running charity governance end to end, including quarterly trustee board packs built to hold up under real scrutiny, not just tick a box
• Owning the numbers day to day - financial controls, treasury, audit prep, VAT - so ambition never outruns what the books can actually support
• Building and growing a small team, including the people side of that as it scales, not just holding the reins

Central London, 3-5 days/week in the office.

• Genuine, demonstrable belief in the mission - closing the gap between talent and opportunity for young people the system has overlooked. This is weighted equally with the criteria below, not a tie-breaker: someone brilliant on paper who's lukewarm on why this work matters isn't right for this role
• UK-based, with the right to work here without sponsorship - the in-office schedule makes this a hard requirement, not a preference
• Comfortable owning genuinely ambiguous work with no existing playbook
• Can build a relationship with a senior funder from a cold start
• Can write and pitch a funding proposition that actually gets money moving, not just a well-formatted deck
• Real strategic chops - you can build a theory of change, not just recite the phrase
• Governance and financial discipline - you won't let the ambition outrun the paperwork
• Real, hands-on fluency with AI tools, applied to actual problems rather than as a buzzword on a CV

• Experience scaling partnerships from inside a tech company
• A corporate fundraising or…