Job Description
The Cares Family s mission is to help people find connection in a disconnected age. Our objectives are to reduce loneliness and isolation; improve people s connection, belonging, purpose and power in a rapidly changing world; and bring people together to reduce social, generational, digital, cultural and attitudinal divides.
Over the last 11 years our model has grown from a tiny idea in a single place into a national leader. Combined, North London Cares (founded in 2011), South London Cares (2014), Manchester Cares (2017), Liverpool Cares (2018) and East London Cares (2019), have connected some 26,000 older and younger neighbours to share over 1 million interactions and 250,000 hours.
Those relationships have had a dramatic impact. 98% of young people involved say they have a stronger connection to the community. 73% of older people involved say their isolation is reduced. Neighbours report feeling a deeper sense of belonging, and part of something bigger than their own lives.
The Cares Family has been improving individual lives and community togetherness for more than a decade, and more recently we ve been growing our work to challenge systemic and cultural norms that drive disconnection too - through new projects, storytelling and campaigns that are rapidly increasing the profile of our work to help make more lasting change.
In 2018, the then Prime Minister launched the government s first ever loneliness strategy at a Cares Family social club. The same year, our CEO was appointed one of 20 inaugural Obama Fellows, bringing global attention to the issues of loneliness and disconnection and the work we are doing at The Cares Family to reduce them. We have received coverage in The Economist, The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph and on BBC1 s News at Ten and Channel 4 News.
With the arrival of the pandemic, loneliness and disconnection are better understood than ever and empathy for people experiencing them has increased. The Cares Family therefore has an opportunity to make an even bigger difference in the years ahead. Our current three-year strategy to achieve that is threefold:
Consolidate operations to ensure we make the biggest impact possible with our resources.
Go deeper with our existing local intergenerational communities to make the biggest difference we can in people s lives.
Spur a national ripple effect across the UK by sharing what we have learnt to help others to develop initiatives connecting their own communities in their own ways, and to help influence broader systemic, cultural and public behaviour change.
ABOUT THIS ROLE
As Head of Impact and Learning, you will lead the strategic development and management of our monitoring, evaluation and learning function, supporting a culture of evidence-based decision making throughout the organisation.
This is an exciting opportunity to shape The Cares Family s impact and learning agenda and work closely with the Senior Leadership and wider teams to help lead and deliver our work building connection across the UK.
The impact and learning function at The Cares Family is only a year old, which means you will continue to create and embed processes, in addition to conducting exciting and innovative evaluation projects with our communities.
We re looking for a person who has the strategic acumen to drive our learning forward, as well as a passion for being hands on and managing day-to-day monitoring and evaluation activities - be it supporting teams to conduct local evaluations or leading on regular data analysis and reporting.
You will need to be highly analytical, with an excellent grounding in evaluation methodology, with a particular focus on evaluation approaches that enable, rather than get in the way of, authentic human relationships. You ll also need to work with teams across our six charities, so strong communication and influencing skills are important attributes.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Operational evaluation management (50%)
Work collaboratively with Programmes (local), Projects (national) and Development (fundraising) teams to provide data and evaluation advice and support.
Work with our national Director of Programmes and Heads of Programmes in each of our five local charities to identify data needs, track progress against team and organisational goals, and advise on data collection approaches.
Implement and oversee feedback loops to ensure consistent data collection and analysis to inform programme delivery.
Lead the organisation s use of dashboards, including developing and managing reports on Salesforce to visualise data and monitor targets and KPIs.
Work closely with our Operations Manager to design and implement ways of capturing data and streamlining Salesforce processes.
Embed a culture of learning across the organisation by supporting and up-skilling teams to take ownership of local-level data to maximise our impact.
Support the Development team with reporting to funders and gaining insights into how we are achieving our outcomes; and conducting monitoring at key stages of funding cycles.
Work with our Head of Communications to ensure we are sharing beautiful stories that demonstrate the impact of our work and engage participants and wider audiences.
Strategic evaluation, research (40%)
Continually improve how we evaluate our programmes and projects and publish qualitative and quantitative evidence that helps improve evaluation practices amongst funders and in the wider community sector.
Lead the continued development of monitoring, evaluation and learning at The Cares Family, ensuring that appropriate tools and processes are in place to support the analysis of our impact.
Work with our teams to make sure our impact data and stories are communicated compellingly and in line with our communication goals.
Support the generation and dissemination of evidence and learning internally and externally by working with our Head of Campaigns, Head of Communications, Director of Development and CEO.
Develop strong working relationships with external organisations and bodies working on loneliness, connection and intergenerational work.
Other projects (10%)
Conduct evaluations and pilots to measure the quality and impact of our work.
Commission and support external evaluations where appropriate.
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR THE FULL JOB DESCRIPTION AND DETAILS ON HOW TO APPLY
The Cares Family is an anti-racist, anti-discriminatory organisation. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, people with disabilities and people from lower income and diverse educational backgrounds who may be under-represented in our organisation.