Job Description

The Youth Endowment Fund is a bold new attempt to put early intervention at the heart of efforts to tackle youth offending.

Over the last few years, evidence suggests that growing numbers of children and young people have been affected by violent crime. More children have been found carrying knives and a growing number have been recorded as victims. We believe that each individual statistic is an important member of our community and society has a duty to protect them.

The Youth Endowment Fund is a charity with a £200m endowment and a mission that matters. We were founded by youth charity Impetus and its partners the Early Intervention Foundation and the Social Investment Business. We exist to prevent children and young people from getting caught up in violent crime. Many organisations have this calling. Our unique role is to identify what works best and to spread the good news.

We do this by funding and rigorously evaluating interventions across England and Wales. At the heart of our work is our Grants Committee. The Grants Committee decides which interventions we should focus our funding and evaluation on. Their decisions are critical to the success of the Fund.

We are looking for the first ever Chair of the Grants Committee.

We are looking for you if:

• Our work motivates you. You want to commit time to reducing the level of youth violence. You have an understanding of the lives of vulnerable young people perhaps through a governance or practical role in a charity, school or alongside the public sector.
• You have experience of operating on boards and/or committees at a senior level. You are talented at chairing – you are good at building a sense of team, running meetings to time, ensuring good and clear decisions are made.
• You have an understanding of grant making and evaluating what works. You have a good sense of how charities or public sector organisations operate and how they approach grant funding.
• You are quickly able to assimilate large amount of information and use it to make wise and informed judgements. You care about evidence. It matters to you that we make evidence-based decisions and that our fundamental goal is to find what works and get it to grow.
• You build positive relationships with people from all backgrounds including senior stakeholders and young people. You are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion.
• You are a strategic thinker who would excel at wrestling with questions of long-term strategy for the YEF.

As the Chair of the Grants Committee you would:

• Chair meetings of the Grants Committee, ensuring robust and clear decisions are made about how we invest the £200m fund.
• Inform and influence our long-term strategy, making excellent use of the expertise and experience of the Committee members.
• Operate as a member of the overarching YEF Committee. This Committee oversees the Executive Director of the Fund, deciding on strategic direction, governance and leadership.