About the role

Head of impact and evidence
£73,928

Our Policy, Research and Impact directorate works across two main areas. Policy and Research colleagues undertake research into the scale and drivers of hunger and hardship and generate solutions to improve policymaking and make a tangible difference to the communities we serve. Our recent report on Hunger in the UK is a good example. The team also includes public affairs professionals who are focused on influencing those who can make change happen – from local authorities, to metro mayors, think tanks, and across devolved and central government.

The Impact and Evidence team, which is led by this role, has a dual focus: firstly, on evaluating our own programmes, so that we can understand what they have achieved and generate evidence about what works; and secondly, on supporting impact measurement across the organisation, enabling effective use of outcome frameworks and performance indicators, and developing evaluation tools which can be mainstreamed through everything we do. By upskilling people to think about their impact, and capturing vital evidence of effectiveness, we can exert a significant multiplier effect on the volume and quality of insight we produce.

Our current areas of interest include financial inclusion, systems change and local organising and mobilisation. We want to understand what we’ve delivered, what it’s achieved for individuals and communities, how we can improve our own services and what messages we should be taking to commissioners and decision-makers to influence them to take action to end the need for food banks in the UK.

You’ll be providing an expert service to a number of different teams, and for a range of purposes, so we’re looking for someone with the complete methodological repertoire. You’ll advise on the most effective methods to use, how they can be tailored to a specific question, and how to manage the risks of different approaches. As well as being an inspiring and developmentally-focused leader in your own right, you must be skilled at building and sustaining relationships with stakeholders, and managing competing priorities and a fast-moving and complex environment.

We’re looking for a high level of technical understanding and the ability to run sound processes. You’ll be comfortable operating as a leader in the organisation, able to discuss high-level objectives with the Chief Strategy Officer or Director of Network Programmes and Innovation, and to suggest ways that your team can help to deliver them. We will want you to aim for the highest standards but there will be occasions when pragmatism, and the ‘art of the possible’, are the right approach, and you’ll have the personal and organisational maturity to recognise when that’s the case. Most importantly, we want you to help us see the big picture, and you’ll gain significant personal satisfaction from seeing change accelerate over the next five years.