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Challenge Events Fundraising Officer / Manager role

LEVEL WATER

Royal Tunbridge Wells

On-site

GBP 30,000 - 45,000

Full time

3 days ago
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Job summary

A charity focused on disabled children's swimming seeks a dynamic Challenge Events Fundraising Officer/Manager to optimize supporter journeys and enhance fundraising. You will create engaging experiences that deepen relationships with supporters while tracking fundraising efforts to ensure targets are met. Ideal candidates naturally build strong connections and thrive in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

  • Experience in customer journey design and delivery.
  • Previous work in an ambitious charity or nonprofit environment.
  • Knowledge of fundraising best practices.

Responsibilities

  • Optimize Supporter Journey plans for fundraising.
  • Create engaging communications across all channels.
  • Track data and report on fundraising targets.

Skills

Customer Experience design
Fundraising trends knowledge
Relationship building
Organisational skills

Job description

Challenge Events Fundraising Officer / Manager role

About you

Your natural mode is entrepreneurial: hustle and drive.

If you are a traditional, big-charity, email-led fundraiser, this one’s probably not for you.

In the past three years we’ve bought a private events business, turned down another, scaled two event series, failed at two others, and doubled our unrestricted income. We would like to hear from you if you want to come on that kind of ride in the next three years.

If you will treat this like your own business.

If you will work independently, spot opportunities, chase and convert them. If you can figure out how to double fundraising from our current supporters, optimise journeys, build genuine personal relationships, and deepen product depth across the fundraising mix.

If you prefer the phone to email, yet still want to spend your days in Excel analysing split-tests to optimise button text.

Your natural mode is entrepreneurial: hustle and drive.

Perhaps you even like outdoor swimming :)

About us

We are a Founder-led charity that is working to solve learn-to-swim for disabled children. In our fundraising, we deliver the “London Marathon of swimming” and the “Glastonbury of swimming”.

Level Water owns and operates one of the UK’s most famous and iconic series of outdoor swims, including the Dart10k and Bantham Swoosh. We also have a growing series of 24-hour relay swims (in lakes and lidos).

We’ve grown our challenge events fundraising to £1m a year, and have 80% unrestricted income. This comes from an incredible community of 3,000 people a year who take on swim events to support our work.

We all cover a lot of ground at work, with multiple projects, tests, ideas and flexibility bouncing around. The environment is fast-paced, fun, stretching, lively, intellectual, challenging, innovative and passionate.

The role

As our Challenge Events / Supporter Journey / Fundraiser Experience Manager (call it what you like), the requirement is that you will know more about supporter journeys than we ever will. You’ll have great instincts, built from experience. You will lead, educate and challenge us. We’ll debate, disagree, test, pilot, build evidence, and scale ideas.

You’ll be creating unforgettable experiences that turn everyday fundraisers into lifelong supporters. You’ll play a critical role in raising the funds that make this mission possible - deepening relationships, inspiring action, and helping people feel deeply connected to the change they’re making possible.

You’ll lead the research, planning, creation, and delivery of engaging communications across all channels. You’ll ensure that every supporter feels supported, valued, and truly understands the impact of their fundraising.

You’ll be responsible for increasing fundraising per supporter in the short term, and for increasing their lifetime value in the medium term. This includes identifying opportunities to develop parallel products and grow supporter engagement across other areas like Major Donors, Corporate Giving, and Regular Giving. From organising events to managing our Fundraiser Hub, you’ll make every interaction with Level Water a standout experience.

We also believe that our fundraisers are our strongest viral and word-of-mouth event marketing opportunity. Not only will they get a couple of dozen donations this year, but they’ll also help us to find next year’s swimmers. So you’ll have the chance to work with our Events Marketing team to make these the best-value, most oversubscribed swim tickets in the country.

You’ll have a lot of freedom to propose new ideas that can deepen relationships, engagement and support; you just need to convince us that the financial model and ROI makes sense.

Key Responsibilities

Challenge Event Supporter Journey & Retention

Learn

  • Review and lead audience insight to understand motivations and barriers
  • Spot opportunities to increase value, connection and community

Design

  • Optimise our Supporter Journey plan to increase fundraising per head and product depth, and build strong, long-term relationships with supporters.
  • Ensure that our ‘Fundraiser Hub’ and other materials meet industry best practice

Deliver

  • Send all emails for 15-20 events, following the Supporter Journey plan
  • Attend many weekend swim events throughout the summer, giving our fundraisers the best possible experience to ensure that they sign-up to an event in the future
  • Deliver additional personal touches to deepen relationships, for example in-person events, training groups, information, offers, case studies, phone calls, hand-written cards, personalised thank-you communications, impact updates, recognition opportunities
  • Lead our CRM use, keeping it up to date with supporter information
  • Have a good knowledge and understanding of our ‘Swimmer Hub’ and where to access information about our swims

Deepen

  • Cross-sell other fundraising products to our swimmer audience. We magic up 3,000 new relationships every year
  • Maximise the opportunities each year to identify Corporates, Major Donors, Regular Givers, T&Fs and repeat fundraisers from this audience
  • Develop new products - like Regular Giving or Memberships - with this audience in mind first.

Improve

  • Take a data-driven approach to improving our Supporter Journey and Communications across our products
  • Track data and deliver regular reporting to the Head of Fundraising and CEO to ensure that we remain on track for fundraising targets (e.g. JustGiving pages and amount raised so far)
  • Continuously develop by learning and following industry best practice and current trends to identify opportunities to improve our Supporter Journey.

Supporting Individual Fundraisers

  • Input to CRM - Design and deliver Supporter Journey
  • Create tips, templates, and tools (like email drafts, social media post ideas) for effective fundraising.
  • Respond to Fundraisers through our Fundraising email inbox and social media pages and messaging platforms.
  • Work closely with our mailing house to post fundraiser thank you's where necessary.

Fundraising know-how

  • Stay informed and educate others on the latest fundraising trends and tools by engaging with industry updates, attending webinars, and exploring best practices.
  • Regularly share insights and recommendations with the internal team, fostering collaboration and continuous improvement in fundraising innovations.
  • Ensure that you are up to date with Fundraising Regulator best practice and legal process and attend regular training sessions on industry changes or updates.

Desirable skills and experience

  • Customer Experience or Customer journey design & delivery
  • Previous experience working in or with an ambitious charity or nonprofit
  • Familiarity with fundraising trends and best practice
  • A point of view on supporter upgrade, cross-sell, or stewardship strategies
  • Experience working on donor or customer retention
  • (For ManagerLevel)Demonstrable success overseeing and growing a broad fundraising mix, from T&F to Challenge Events, Corporate to Regular Giving.

You’ll thrive in this role if you are:

  • A natural relationship-builder who genuinely enjoys making people feel seen, valued, and appreciated.
  • Excited by challenge and change - and happy to test, learn, and adapt.
  • A thoughtful communicator who can balance efficiency with warmth.
  • Organised and proactive, with the drive to get things done and the humility to ask for help when needed.
  • Proud to take ownership and always on the lookout for ways to improve and grow.
  • Energised by teamwork, collaboration, and shared purpose

If this sounds like the role for you, then please do pick up the phone (07912 432 660) to express an interest in the role and ask any questions that you may have.

Please send a CV and Cover Letter (which can be a 2-3 minute video) to lucy@levelwater.org

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