Director of Policy and Advocacy

About Sustain

Sustain is a powerful alliance of around 100 national organisations – working with hundreds more at local and regional level. We believe everyone should have access to healthy and sustainably produced food that protects people, animals and planet. We run highly effective and creative campaigns, advocacy, networks and demonstration projects, to catalyse permanent changes in food and farming policy and practice, and equip people and communities with the skills to achieve change.

About this role

Director of Policy and Advocacy is a senior leadership role within Sustain, working across a range of policy, project and campaign areas. We are seeking a strong leader, with management experience and a keen interest in promoting solutions to many of the biggest challenges currently facing us: climate change, restoration of nature, and achieving a healthy, fair, diverse and sustainable system for food and farming. Leadership includes senior oversight:

• On ‘policy’, of the priorities, coherence and cross-fertilisation between our various projects and campaigns and the priorities identified by our alliance members, expert working parties and project/campaign leads.
• On ‘advocacy’, of Sustain’s range of approaches to achieving change – e.g. campaigning, partnership working, standards-setting as well as soft influence, at national and local level.

The Sustain alliance – members and colleagues – represent a rich source of expertise and well-proven, viable solutions to many of the challenges that face us. These need to be supported and replicated at scale, with barriers to adoption removed. It is the job of the Sustain alliance to cultivate the movement, win the policies and other support for solutions, and accelerate the process of change.

As a Director, you will have a key role in supporting the development of new and fundable areas of work, as well as contributing to organisational strategy and decision-making for Sustain. You will also hold strong people leadership skills, as the role oversees key teams at Sustain with five direct reports, and will support the delivery of our organisational plan.

Tasks and responsibilities

The Director of Policy and Advocacy for Sustain will have a varied and stimulating workload, working closely with the Chief Executive and in collaboration with Sustain’s senior management, project and campaign leads, project partners, Sustain alliance members and associates, and strategic funders. The postholder will provide strategic leadership on a range of policy, campaign, influencing and communications matters relating to advocacy for healthy and sustainable food and farming. The work will include:

Policy, advocacy and campaign development

• Creating an advocacy strategy for Sustain, working with colleagues and members, and building productive relationships with key audiences and partners, including an annual programme of activities and events.
• Leading on publishing policy reports, evidence submissions, statements and press releases, and overseeing those generated by Sustain colleagues and/or wider alliance activities.
• Overseeing key policy, advocacy and campaign themes, to ensure these are pursued effectively and prioritised within advocacy and campaign work, with line-management responsibilities in relation to relevant campaign coordinators and their teams.
• Providing everyday advisory and/or skills-building support or other opportunities for colleagues to develop their policy, influencing and communications work.

Stakeholder relationships

• Ensuring that members of the Sustain alliance are engaged in policy and advocacy and benefiting from the opportunities provided by their alliance membership.
• Building trusted relationships with a range of alliance members, government departments, elected representatives, project and campaign partners, journalists, media outlets, funders and opinion formers; and cultivating opportunities to work together to achieve positive change, including potential partnership initiatives.

Leadership in organisation management

• Working with the core team to ensure that this work is adequately resourced, and budgets are managed effectively, understanding and contributing to how this fits within Sustain’s overall financial management, resource use and fundraising needs.
• Developing compelling and impactful activities, evidence-gathering, partnerships and funding bids and feeding into development of impact reporting and theories of change.
• Leading on one or more operational priorities, working with the senior team and other key members of the staff team to ensure that tasks happen in a timely and effective way.
• Maintaining excellent financial records, contact databases and mailing lists, in line with good governance, data protection and accountability.
• Ensuring that monitoring, evaluation and learning is undertaken in relation to the campaigns and advocacy work, to help shape the way these develop, and to ensure that this informs reporting to funders and Sustain’s Council of Trustees, organisational learning and development of future activities.

Oversight on public communications

• Overseeing public communications in service of advocacy goals, working with expert project and campaign coordinators at Sustain. This will include representing the Sustain alliance externally – for example, with journalists, in the media, at high-level political opportunities such as giving oral evidence to parliamentary enquiries, chairing or speaking at panel events, organising roundtables or conferences, pitching or reporting to funders, etc.
• Overseeing the work of Sustain’s colleagues who lead on communications, social media, digital and design and parliament/public affairs to enable effective delivery of the policy and advocacy strategy.
• Editorial oversight and senior sign-off for Sustain’s political, campaigning and public communications activity, ensuring consistency of tone and approach and cultivating helpful cross-fertilisation of ideas and joined-up policy responses across the range of Sustain activities. Also ensuring that communications and public affairs activities serve and respect the alliance’s strategy, agreed tone, opportunities to influence, political impartiality, legal boundaries and our charitable objectives.

The Head of Policy and Advocacy will also:

• Undertake other tasks and responsibilities that may arise from time to time.

Personal specification

Sustain is seeking a professional, experienced, strategic Director of Policy and Advocacy with fantastic team-working, influencing and alliance-building skills, who shares our commitment to healthy, fair and sustainable food and farming, and who has the following skills and experience:

Essential

• Background and preferably several years of senior experience across campaigns, advocacy and policy development, preferably in an area relevant to Sustain’s work, and with experience of working collaboratively to develop policy positions.
• Demonstrable experience of running successful national or local campaigns to achieve change.
• Demonstrable understanding of campaign, advocacy and influencing approaches, tools and tactics.
• Several years of senior experience managing people and teams to high performance standards.
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to work with a range people and organisations, navigating diverse viewpoints to build consensus, whilst driving forward a shared agenda.
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills in fluent spoken and written English, and experience of upholding high editorial standards in internal and public communications.
• Demonstrable ability to set strategic priorities, create organisation policy positions and to deliver priority messages to key audiences in various settings and media types.
• High levels of strategic thinking and self-motivation, as well as the ability to respond to rapidly changing circumstances.
• Excellent project management, time management, and organisational skills and the ability to work under pressure and to meet deadlines.
• Willingness and aptitude to line-manage other people working on relevant areas of work.
• A demonstrable commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice.
• Energy, enthusiasm, creativity and tenacity.

Desirable

• A personal interest in healthy, fair and sustainable food and farming.
• Established contacts and positive working relationships with relevant organisations, journalists, media outlets, elected representatives and their teams.
• Experiencing of chairing and/or facilitation, helping people with diverse viewpoints to work together in common purpose.
• Experience of working in alliance or coalition and an understanding of the associated benefits and challenges.
• Experience of commissioning external providers, such as for research, polling or other tools, evidence and data useful to campaigns, advocacy and public communications.
• Experience of developing fundable initiatives, funder relationship development, monitoring, reporting and funder stewardship.
• Experience of budget management and financial reporting.
• Experience of integrating diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice into work programmes, and practical and policy ideas on how to improve this within an organisation and in advocacy activities.
• Experience of devising, developing or implementing improvements to operational matters within an organisation, preferably in a charity or the third sector.
• Experience of how smaller and third-sector organisations manage their funding.
• Understanding of the culture, opportunities and boundaries of the not-for-profit and charity sectors, especially in this role with regards good governance, charitable objectives and political impartiality.

Diversity

The person appointed will contribute to the mutually supportive culture of Sustain (including colleagues, partners, participants and audiences) in which equality and diversity are not just respected but promoted. Visit our website here for some useful advice if you are applying for a job at Sustain.

Sustain is recruiting for this role as part of our Ethnicity Confident and Disability Confident schemes. Applicants who meet all the essential criteria, and who let us know voluntarily (via our Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form) that you would like to be considered in this way, will have an enhanced chance of gaining a first-stage interview.

Sustain welcomes applications from everyone regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, class, socio-economic background, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and/or belief. We are happy to discuss and consider flexible working at the point of hire. We particularly encourage applications from people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people with diverse identities related to gender and sexuality, and people with disabilities. This is because these groups are currently underrepresented at Sustain. Where two or more candidates are judged to be of equal merit, priority may be given to a candidate who belongs to a group less represented at Sustain.

Discuss the role

This role is a senior leadership position within Sustain. For this role, we are offering opportunities for an online or telephone conversation with the Chief Executive Kath Dalmeny for you to be able to ask questions about the role. These conversations will be 20 minutes long, confidential and will not influence the interviews or decision-making process. Participation is not a requirement for applying for this role. Please email kath@sustainweb.org indicating your preference for ‘morning’ or ‘afternoon’ on either Wednesday 20 or Wednesday 27 March. Note: These slots have been popular and useful, so an additional day of slots has been opened up on Wednesday 3 April. It may be possible to arrange a time after these dates, up to the day before the closing date, subject to availability.

How to apply

To apply for this position, please email recruitment@sustainweb.org the following:

- a CV (maximum two pages)
- a covering letter telling us about your experience and how this relates to the personal specification (maximum two pages)
- a completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring form

As we are recruiting for several positions over this period, please put Director of Policy and Advocacy in the subject line of your covering email along with your name.

Deadline: 10am, Wednesday 10 April 2024

First-stage interviews will take place online on Thursday 18 April. Second-stage interviews will take place in-person at the Sustain office in Cambridge Heath, London on Thursday 25 April. Please indicate in your application if you are not available either of these weeks, although we cannot guarantee we can accommodate requests for alternative timings.