We are looking for a Fundraising Officer. The vacancy is up online and we encourage people to apply.

The successful candidate will be the third Fundraising Officer in our history. Our first was Lydia Powell. Lydia joined the AKU Society after taking a master’s degree in International Development from the University of Cambridge. She did a great job. Through community fundraising events, she raised £8,000 for our first International Patient Workshop in Liverpool. She organised our first Stand up for AKU! Comedy Night. Also, the funding she found from the Sylvia Adams Charity Trust (for a programme called Breaking Down Barriers) and the Wixamtree Trust (for Bedfordshire patients) helps us support people with AKU all year round.

Lydia was replaced by Rory Munro. Rory had been a fundraiser for the Leprosy Mission. While with us, he turned Garrod Day, our annual cake sale, into an international fundraising event to spread the word about AKU. He also recruited seven runners for the Cambridge Half Marathon and raised thousands from trusts and foundations. Now, Rory works for the Cambridgeshire Deaf Association. He is much missed.

The Fundraising Officer’s job is to look after the fundraising database and the fundraising section of our website. They will find new trusts and foundations which might fund our projects, write funding proposals and keep good relationships with existing funders. They will also have to work with Reece (Admin. and Comms.) to organise fundraising events. Finally, we would like them to search for new corporate partners and maintain good relationships with them. You can read the whole job description here.

We’re looking for someone with good communication skills who can handle lots of jobs at once. It’s important that they work well in teams. There are only four of us at the AKU Society, and most of us are in the office every working day! Some fundraising experience is also vital – it doesn’t have to have been in the charity sector, though. We would also like to see some experience in project reporting and managing budgets. Ideally, they’d be good at IT and copywriting, too.

The Fundraising Officer gets to work out of an office in the middle of Cambridge – the best city in the world. There is lots of travel round the UK. There might even be travel abroad for international conferences. We provide training and the chance to meet movers and shakers in the charity and pharmaceutical sectors.

Does this sound like you? Apply here online before 30th July. We’ll get back to you!