The Church of England has allocated £25 million to initiate a social impact investment programme. The programme will make investments that seek to have a measurable positive impact on deep rooted social and environmental challenges in the UK. The programme’s intentions are ambitious, with the goal to establish the Church as an influential and successful social investor within the UK. The programme announced its first two investment commitments in 2021 (see below):

Church of England’s First Social Impact Investment to provide housing for vulnerable women | The Church of England

Church of England’s Social Investment Programme to support charities to recover from the pandemic | The Church of England

This role offers an excellent opportunity to support the Head of Social Impact Investment in developing and managing the £25m social impact investment programme and gain exposure to the field of impact investing.

This will include maintaining an active pipeline of mission aligned investment opportunities; carrying out due diligence on potential investments; presenting findings to the Archbishops’ Council Investment Committee; monitoring investees’ impact and financial performance and communicating this effectively to stakeholders both across the Church community and externally.

You will also oversee the operational activities of the programme working alongside the NCI’s finance and legal teams.

We would like to hear from you if you have the essential requirements outlined below to excel in this role.

The working hours will be up to 21 per week with exact working arrangements to be discussed. The salary will be prorated according to the working hours agreed (based on a 35 hour full time working week).

This post is offered on a fixed term contract which isexpected to last until Dec 2025 with the flexibility to combine with other responsibilities.

To arrange an informal conversation, please email mandy.adams@churchofengland.org

You will be contacted w/c 12 September 2022 about the outcome of your application. First stage interviews will be held on the 15 September 2022.

The Church of England is for everyone and we want to reflect the diversity of the community the Church serves across the whole country. This is a priority for the Archbishops. Therefore, while of course we welcome all applications from interested and suitably experienced people, we would particularly welcome applicants from UK Minority Ethnic Backgrounds and disabled people.

In return we offer a unique environment with opportunities for continuous learning, generous annual leave for work life balance, season ticket loans and a range of benefits including discounted entry to attractions and what we feel is a market leading package when it comes to our pension scheme.

The Role

• Support the development of a healthy pipeline of future social investment opportunities that meet the programme’s financial and impact goals.
• Liaise with National Policy Advisers in the Faith and Public Life team in order to assess key areas of mission alignment in investment opportunities.
• Carry out financial and impact due diligence on social investment opportunities in order to support recommendations to the Investment Committee. This may include conducting site visits and working with external advisors where required.
• Monitor the programme's investments and maintain financial and impact records for individual investments as well as for the programme as a whole, liaising closely with the finance team.
• Manage the operational functions of the programme including, monitoring investment drawdowns and income receipts, monitoring programme expenses against budget, contracting with external advisors, managing your customer requirements and keeping accurate records of all of the above.
• Identify effective ways to communicate the impact of the social investment programme to internal and external stakeholders. This will include developing the programme’s first impact report.
• Build and maintain relationships across the social investment and faith based investment communities to share learnings.

The Requirements

Essential

Skills/Aptitudes:

• Good financial analysis skills including the ability to evaluate financial statements, business plans and financial models.
• Strong Excel skills including the ability to build and evaluate financial models in Excel and run sensitivity analyses.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills including the ability to support the production of investment papers and impact reports.

Knowledge/Experience:

• A good understanding of and commitment to addressing social and environmental challenges in the UK.
• Relevant work experience in investment, finance, accountancy, business consultancy or another analytical field.

Personal Attributes:

• A self-starter able to work under their own initiative as well as in a team.
• A desire for continued learning and development particularly in the field of impact investing.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and a proven ability to build good working relationships with people from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives.
• Enthusiasm for role the Church can play in the social investment field and the impact that can be achieved.

Desirable

• Experience of investment decision making and due diligence processes.
• Experience in impact investing and impact measurement.
• Experience in or knowledge of any of the main impact themes targeted by the programme: housing and community, financial inclusion and the environment.

We in the National Church Institutions support the mission and ministries of the Church all over England. We work with parishes, dioceses (regional offices), schools, other ministries and our partners at a national and international level.

Excellence, Respect, Integrity

We follow these three values in everything we do, whether we are of Christian faith, another faith or no faith. To learn more about working for National Church Institutions and our benefits, please click here

As a Disability Confident Leader, we actively look to attract, recruit and retain those of you who are disabled.

As a member of the Armed Forces Covenant, we welcome applications from those of you who have served in our Armed Forces and their families.

We are committed to being an equal opportunities employer and to ensuring that everyone, job applicants, customers and other people with whom we deal, are treated fairly and not subject to discrimination. We will do whatever is necessary to provide genuine equality of opportunity. We continuously review our policies and processes to support our aim to create a workforce as diverse as the nation the Church of England serves.