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Project Manager

Employer
Citizenship Payment Plan
Location
London (Central), London (Greater)
Salary
£35,000 to £40,000 depending on experience
Closing date
29 May 2019

Thousands of families across the UK want to bring stability to their children’s future by securing their British citizenship. Often, these children have been born in the UK, identify as British and are legally entitled to citizenship. But the £1012 Home Office fees are a substantial barrier for many, forcing families towards illegal loan sharks or into financial hardship.  

Citizenship would make future employment and higher education more affordable and accessible for these young people. Young people with irregular status also feel their life is in limbo and experience frustration born of prolonged periods of uncertainty, in which it is not possible to take steps to build a more secure future.  

With finite philanthropic money available to help these families, the team behind the Citizenship Payment Plan pilot wanted to find a way of supporting hundreds and eventually thousands of families by recycling money via a social investment backed payment plan, instead of using grants which can only help once. 

We also believe there is a desire from many of these families to pay their own way. Borrowing and repaying money can bring a greater sense of dignity than the feeling of being reliant on handouts.  

We want to provide these loans fairly and affordably, and so have sought a delivery model that keeps costs down and found funding partners able to invest for social impact rather than financial returns. We have therefore designed a programme that will allow families to spread their fee over 12 months, rather than pay in one lump sum.  

The payment plan will be administered by EdAid Ltd. EdAid Ltd partners with universities to provide deferred tuition plans to post-graduate students who are unable to access funding elsewhere. EdAid has been designed to meet the needs of an excluded group. Most financial services in the UK are still based on conventional lending structures, whereas EdAid lends in a way that is available to Islamic Groups and is therefore shifting the provision of finance to suit a more diverse UK population. Of the existing loan book, 63% of borrowers are first generation immigrants and 50% are Islamic. 

We have secured funding to run a 2-3 year pilot programme in partnership with EdAid Ltd. We are now ready the hire a Project Manager to lead the pilot from within EdAid. The Project Manager will provide on-boarding support for borrowers and be responsible for partnership development as well as evaluation and learning. This role will play a crucial part in testing how migrant families can be provided with helpful financial services and products and can help lay the foundations for positive changes around Citizenship fees and financial inclusion. 

The pilot will be the first of its kind in the UK. There are no other ethical financial services available to migrant families specifically for Citizenship Fees. There are also very few examples of social investment being made at a 0% interest rate, as we have for this pilot. We hope that if we can deliver this pilot successfully it will pave the way for wider financial services for migrant families as well as for more creative social investments.  

In this pilot we are also testing the viability of using a largely online delivery platform for the provision of loans to migrants. If we can demonstrate the effectiveness of online delivery it will allow us to scale the programme nationally and broaden the uses of the loans to support families for a variety of needs.  
The role 

he PM will be the lynchpin of the pilot programme; building and maintaining relationships with referrers, beneficiaries and external stakeholders alike. The ideal applicant will have a mixture of relevant skills; most critically in stakeholder management, problem-solving, marketing and some experience in working with vulnerable beneficiaries.  

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES  

PROGRAMME DELIVERY - 70% of workload 

  • Maintain regular contact with those referring borrowers to the pilot (e.g. KIND UK & Kings College London outreach) to build and track loan beneficiary pipeline for the programme
  • With support from EdAid loan administration, accompany borrowers through the on-boarding process, ensuring they are clear, comfortable and confident in what they are agreeing to and engaging translators where necessary
  • Liaise with the campaign teams at Citizens UK and Kings College London to ensure the stories of borrowers are feeding into and complementing the campaign to abolish fees
  • Problem solving operational challenges that may arise as part of the pilot nature of the programme   
  • COMMUNICATIONS - 15% of workload 
  • Coordinate the marketing and communications strategy, including the webpage, flyers and social media
  • Ensure referral partners are well briefed and informed about the programme
  • Serve as the pilot’s main point of contact, triaging incoming communications, and managing general enquiries
  • Act as the voice/spokesperson for Citizenship Payment Plan with media, conferences, events, meetups & community groups.  

REPORTING - 10% of workload 

  • Convening funders and investors to agree learning and success objectives for the programme
  • Collating and synthesising activity data for reporting to funders and investors (currently six in total)
  • Quarterly meetings with funders and investors to provide an update on the programme, flag any risks or issues and outline how these will be managed 

FUNDRAISING - 5% of workload 

To date, funding has been secured for Year 1 of the pilot and for most of Year 2. We are continuing to work with funding prospects, but the Project Manager will need to raise further funding to enable the pilot to run for its full 3 year planned term 
 
PLEASE NOTE: The above job description is a guide to the work you may be required to undertake but does not form part of your contract of employment and may change from time to time to reflect changing circumstances. This appointment is subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service check. We can only consider candidates who have the right to work in the UK.   
  
KEY COMPETENCIES, SKILLS & EXPERIENCE 

We hope to recruit a candidate who has some, not all, of the below competencies, skills and experience.  

Our must haves are proven Project Management experience and an enthusiasm for the pilot. Beyond this, we want to be flexible about the profile of candidate we can consider. 

SKILLS  

  • Comfortable with Excel and financial management
  • Stakeholder management
  • Fundraising  
  • Marketing strategy design and implementation 

COMPETENCIES  

  • Self-sufficient, entrepreneurial and proactive
  • Comfortable working flexibly, evolving the pilot as learnings appear
  • Ability to think creatively about what scaled impact could look like i.e. not necessarily a bigger version of the initial idea
  • Confident problem solver and lateral thinker  
  • Understanding of safeguarding principles and procedures as relevant to adult and children beneficiaries  

EXPERIENCE  

  • Start-up/pilot experience
  • Financial inclusion experience
  • Experience with adult or child beneficiaries of support services
  • Scaling experience  
  • Migrant sector experience 

HOW TO APPLY  

Apply via email by sending us a covering letter and your CV by midnight on May 29th.   

Your Cover Letter should be no longer than two pages of A4.  

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