YMCA Essex

The Vacancy Job Title: Head of Fundraising, YMCA Essex Location: Chelmsford Salary: £55,000 per annum Weekly Hours: 35 Reference: YMC Make a lasting impact with YMCA Essex. We re embarking on an exciting journey to redevelop our iconic Victoria Road site creating a vibrant community space that transforms lives. To make this vision a reality, we re seeking a dynamic Head of Fundraising to lead the generation of income across multiple streams and help shape the future of our organisation. About the Role As Head of Fundraising, you ll play a pivotal role in delivering YMCA Essex s income generation strategy, ensuring sustainable and diverse funding for our redevelopment project and wider community initiatives. Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, you ll bring creativity, strategic thinking, and drive to build meaningful partnerships and deliver strong results. You ll lead on securing income from a variety of sources including trusts and foundations, corporate partners, major donors, legacies, community fundraising, and social enterprise. With ambitious targets and a clear vision, you ll identify new opportunities, manage risks, and ensure a healthy return on investment. This role will also see you collaborate across teams - engaging staff, residents, volunteers and community supporters in our mission. You ll be a visible and inspiring leader, fostering a culture of energy, growth, and shared purpose. About You You are seeking an opportunity where there s space and scope to build something amazing from the ground up. This means you ll almost certainly be an experienced fundraiser or income generation professional who thrives on building relationships and achieving results. You ll combine strategic insight with hands-on delivery and bring a proven track record of meeting ambitious income targets for capital projects. Key qualities include: Experience in one or more of the following: trusts and foundations, corporate partnerships, major gifts, or community fundraising. Strong, pragmatic communication and stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to engage senior leaders, donors, and partners. The ability to innovate, plan strategically, and manage competing priorities effectively. A commitment to YMCA Essex s core values of Kindness, Fairness, Professionalism, Perseverance, and Joy. Why Join Us? At YMCA Essex, we believe in creating opportunities for everyone to thrive. You ll be joining a passionate, supportive team driven by a shared purpose - to strengthen our community and change lives for the better. If you re ready to bring energy, expertise, and vision to this transformative project, we d love to hear from you. Apply today and be part of something extraordinary. Our recruitment process is anonymised and candidates' names are hidden. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds. Safer recruitment is important to us and the successful applicant will be asked to provide two references. They will also be required to complete a safeguarding self-declaration, safeguarding training and undertake a DBS check.