Development Manager

Fixed Term – 2 years
Hours: 22.5 hours a week (3 days)

Overview

The Mersey Rivers Trust (MRT) is an environmental charity focused on the protection and enhancement of rivers and waterbodies across the Mersey Catchment, covering Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire. We deliver a wide range of projects including river restoration, natural flood management, monitoring, education, biodiversity, and community engagement.

As the Trust continues to grow, we are seeking to appoint a Development Manager to lead our income strategy, income delivery and future funding development function. This is a pivotal role that will strengthen the financial sustainability of MRT by ensuring a proactive, strategic and well-managed approach to sustained income generation.

The postholder will lead our income strategy, build and sustain strong relationships with funders and our strategic partners as well as provide specialist oversight of funding applications—with a particular focus on financial quality, viability and alignment with organisational priorities. You will work closely with the Chief Executive Officer, Senior Leadership Team, Trustees and project managers to identify opportunities, develop bids, and support informed decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development of the Trust’s income strategy, identifying strategic priorities, seek out key funding opportunities, and ensure long-term revenue pathways to support organisational sustainability.
• Produce, maintain and report on income forecasts, modelling year-ahead and multi-year scenarios and identifying risks, funding gaps and opportunities.
• Proactively identify, research and pursue income opportunities including charitable trusts, public sector programmes, corporate funding, environmental markets and emerging funding sources.
• Build, strengthen, manage and sustain relationships with funders, partners and prospective supporters across the Mersey Catchment. Work with all these stakeholders to proactively create successful funding opportunities and subsequently funding bids, including proactively building consortium bids with key partners.
• Lead the financial review of all major funding bids, ensuring the funding sought will cover our delivery costs, are accurate, compliant and aligned with internal procedures.
• Support colleagues developing funding applications, providing guidance on narrative, budgets, match funding, outputs and evidence.
• Coordinate and prepare funding applications, including large and strategic bids, ensuring high-quality submissions.
• Maintain a central register of income opportunities and funding deadlines to guide the Trust’s income generation activities.
• Provide income and funding reports and forecasts for Trustees, the CEO and Senior Leadership Team.
• Represent the Trust at meetings and networks to promote the MRT’s work and develop new opportunities for funding.
• Support the CEO and Senior Leadership team with strategic external relationships and activities as may be required.
• Any other reasonable duties as required by MRT.

The post holder will be home based with travel throughout the Mersey catchment. The applicant will need to live within or close to the Mersey catchment to facilitate regular travel to meetings. Remote working from other parts of the country cannot be considered for this role due to the need for regular face-to-face interactions.

Candidate Profile

Essential

• Experience and successful track record of income generation, business development, or strategic planning.
• Experience preparing or reviewing funding applications, including financial aspects (£100k and higher)
• Excellent written and verbal communication and influencing skills.
• Ability to build and maintain strong relationships with funders and partners, and engage at senior levels in these organisations
• Highly organised, able to manage competing priorities.
• Self-motivated and effective when working independently.
• Strong numeracy, accuracy and attention to detail.
• Good IT literacy, including Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
• A reliable team player with strong professionalism.

Desirable

• Knowledge of environmental funding instruments such as green finance or nature-based solutions.
• Experience in the environmental or charity sector.
• Understanding of the Mersey Catchment, the water sector and the catchment based approach.
• Experience of supporting colleagues to develop funding skills.
• A network of sector-relevant contacts.

General Notes

• Some travel around the Mersey Catchment will be necessary therefore a current driving licence and access to a vehicle (insured for business use) is desirable or otherwise access to public transport networks.
• This position will from time to time require work during some evenings, weekends and public holidays to meet the needs of the post. A time-off in lieu system is operated by the Trust.
• We will also require the successfully applicant to undergo a basic DBS check and provide satisfactory references from previous employers.

Term and Conditions

The following terms and conditions are typically offered to Mersey Rivers Trust staff and are set out as a guide only. Terms and conditions may vary according to circumstances and this summary does not form part of any subsequent employment

Annual leave: 28 days annual leave pro rata plus bank holidays
Location: Home Based