Job Description

Salary: £29,588 per annum

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 24 June 2026

The Role

This role supports the Children’s Cancer North charity team, who raise funds to make life better for children with cancer. The role is designed to provide administrative support to the Children's Cancer North team and stewardship of donor relations, enabling the charity to continue to thrive and grow. This is an exciting opportunity to gain experience working within a successful and growing regional charity as part of a wider fundraising team, which consists of 8 employees, with varying experience levels, who have worked for the charity for between 4 months and 10 years.

In this role, you’ll be based at our Newcastle Upon Tyne campus that has fantastic transport links and state of the art facilities. This is an office-based role, but we offer a flexible working model.

About the Charity:

Children’s Cancer North is an independent charity with over 40 years of heritage in supporting individuals and families affected by childhood cancer. Newly formed in 2021, from the marriage of North of England Children’s Cancer Research and Children’s Cancer Fund, our charities have collectively raised over £40 million to support children with cancer in the North East and Cumbria since 1979. Children’s Cancer North aims to make life better for children with cancer through providing direct support to children in treatment and their families, investing in revolutionary research and raising awareness of the disease across the North East and Cumbria. It is a registered charity working in partnership with Newcastle University, funding research carried out within the Centre for Cancer, a Newcastle University centre of research excellence.

This post is full time, tenable for 24 months.

Key Accountabilities

Events: Support and Administration

• Support the Events Manager and Community & Events Fundraising Officer in the planning and delivery of events including, but not limited to, the Children’s Cancer Run, Memory Day, Teachers’ Training Day, and Children’s Cancer Run Schools’ Awards. To include preparation and circulation of documents, communication with event stakeholders to obtain, coordinate and record specific details and legal documentation, preparation of presentations and event materials for various audiences to a clear brief, processing event catering orders with various suppliers, and any further tasks as directed by the Events Manager
• Lead the event operations of the younger and older children’s Christmas parties, working with the Hospital Play Specialist team and external organisations to ensure the planning and delivery of these essential events are successful, within budget and to timescales
• Prepare event equipment lists based on kit storage levels and determine, in a timely manner, where equipment stock levels of specific items require replenishing
• Understand the processes of the various online registration platforms for event participants and use these to assist in the online entries for charity events, with particular attention to the Children’s Cancer Run and supporting the administration of the multiple Children’s Cancer North Team Great North Run places
• Provide on the day support at Children’s Cancer North events as required
• Work with the Marketing & Communications Manager to maintain and record the stock levels for fundraising materials and charity merchandise, including involvement in decision making for new merchandise options based on data analysis of past sales

Fundraising and Supporter Stewardship

• Work alongside the Children’s Cancer North Community & Events Fundraising Officer to design and deliver a programme of excellent stewardship, providing on-going support and motivation to individual reactive fundraisers who choose to support our cause, encouraging repeat or ongoing activity
• Signposting to community fundraisers who reactively choose to support our charity and link them with Children’s Cancer North events or other opportunities known to the charity to help them develop their fundraising potential
• Provide courteous and effective support in response to enquiries from members of the public, charity supporters and event participants, via phone, mail, social media and in person, encouraging their ongoing support of the charity. Filter any issues and resolve queries independently, seeking the relevant assistance for supporters and donors and passing more complex queries on to others within the team as appropriate.
• Manage the online shop on the charity website, maintaining stock levels and ensuring supporters receive their orders within the promised timescales

Data Management

• Support the Finance & Administration Officer in preparing data reports to communicate to the full staff team for analysis
• Support the Digital Marketing Officer with the distribution of printed and digital mailings and communications and disseminate information as required on behalf of the charity ensuring supporter data is recorded and updated after each delivery
• Develop a prize donations system, from new and existing data held by the charity for retailers and experience activities, into a database to request support from donors in this area of business. Use the database to manage and record all prizes requested by the charity to use for fundraising means
• Utilise the charity’s CRM system to create data collection forms to enable the charity to establish more robust procedures for engagement with supporters, volunteers, beneficiaries and donors to reduce the manual workload in data collection within these areas. Maintain and develop these processes to help grow the charity’s database using integrating systems

Brand Development and Reputation

• Establish and maintain a process to assist the Digital Marketing Officer, Community & Events Fundraising Officer and Corporate Partnerships Officer to collaborate on social media and website content plans to ensure the provision of excellent supporter care
• Engage in maintaining social media accounts and website content when required

Empathy and Emotional Support

• Provide empathetic support to help build long term beneficial relationships with supporters and families that are bereaved or have a child in treatment via phone, email and social media, encouraging them to develop ways in which to support the cause that fits with their capacity and wishes
• Support the Community & Events Fundraising Officer in arranging meetings with beneficiaries and supporters of the charity with a personal link to the cause. Guide those who are visiting the Great North Children’s Hospital to understand our cash handling procedure around donations and provide information as required

Budgeting and Reporting Administration

• Proactively ensure that details of stewardship plans are compiled, documented, implemented and recorded on the charity’s CRM database
• Liaise with the Finance & Administration Officer with regards to the acknowledgement and thank you process as well as writing personalised acknowledgement and stewardship letters, certificates and emails to supporters as required
• Circulate regular information to the charity team to ensure they are aware of key community fundraisers

General

• Support the Children’s Cancer North charity fundraising team by contributing to and supporting any other duties appropriate to the grade of the role to further the objectives of the charity
• The post holder will be responsible for planning and managing their own workload and will work autonomously to achieve deadlines/goals. They will also be expected to manage some aspects of other peoples’ work and be pro-active
• The post-holder will be required to develop effective relationships with internal and external members of the team
• Flexible working approach, able to work occasional evenings and weekends
• Access to a car for work purposes with applicable drivers’ licence

The Person

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Excellent organisational and interpersonal skills, including the ability to triage queries and issues efficiently
• Strong communication skills and ability to interact with a wide range of individuals, demonstrating a professional, friendly and sensitive manner
• Demonstrable experience of providing good customer service to supporters including an awareness of how to motivate and support volunteers and reactive fundraisers
• Good knowledge of fundraising principles and methods including events operational procedures and policies (e.g. health and safety, finance, volunteers, etc.)
• Excellent IT skills with proficiency in the use of Microsoft Office (especially Outlook, Excel and Word) products
• Able to prioritise, plan and organise own workload in response to changing demands and priorities to meet tight deadlines whilst paying attention to detail, specifically when handling sensitive data
• Demonstrable administrative skills, including experience of establishing and maintaining filing systems (electronic and paper), servicing committees, etc
• Experience of managing confidential and/or sensitive information with tact and discretion, and a working knowledge of data protection GDPR requirements
• Able to work to targets, plans and budgets and submit relevant financial reports when required
• Experience working with a charitable CRM system or equivalent
• Understanding of charity regulations and legislation (desirable)

Attributes and Behaviour

• Understands the charity’s values and guiding principles
• People orientated, is approachable and has a positive ‘can-do’ attitude
• Works in partnership with others and has excellent interpersonal and organisational skills
• Demonstrates high energy and commitment to delivering an excellent service
• Has a positive attitude towards continuous process improvement
• Sees other areas and people as ‘customers’ and follows through on enquiries and requests
• Team working - able to work effectively within a small team with a willingness to learn the responsibilities contained within other roles, providing team resilience during staff absences
• Flexible working - able to work occasional evenings and weekends, maintaining an enthusiastic and positive approach with a professional and friendly manner
• Demonstrates resilience to the demands of the role and pace of change
• Promotes a culture of mutual respect

Qualifications

• Prior industry experience OR
• Broad vocational experience, acquired through a combination of job-related vocational training and considerable on-the-job experience
• Clean driving license and access to own car for business use

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.

We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society. We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.

At Newcastle University we hold a Gold Athena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality. We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC. We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.

In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe.

Requisition ID: 29474