Finance Director

Location: Winchester

Salary: £45k-50k for 20 hours pw (to £87k FTE)

Hours: 20 hours per week Monday-Friday, office based with some flexibility for events out of hours

Benefits: 31 days holiday (inc bank hols), 10% pension, BUPA, free parking, beautiful working environment

Aspire Jobs are delighted to be working in an exclusive partnership with Marwell Wildlife to help them recruit an experienced FD role working within their Executive team and reporting directly to the CEO.

Marwell Wildlife is a registered charity dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity and other natural resources. They employ a talented team who are passionate about conservation, education, research, welfare, and sustainability.

What does it feel like to work as part of the Marwell family? Well, unique! Their brand values of being warm, wise, welcoming, and contemporary flow through everything they do and support their brand promise of connecting people with nature. Couple that with their genuine enthusiasm for wildlife conservation, and you have an organisation which is making a positive and sustained impact on people’s lives. Also, you will be working within their 140 acre wildlife park - what’s not to love?!

Their mission is to conserve biodiversity and other natural resources, both locally and internationally - but they rely on the support of thousands to bring it to life!

They engage with over 42,000 children and young people through their conservation educational programmes, and welcome over 500,000 visitors each year to their 140-acre zoological park. In every contact they seek to encourage understanding and inspire care for the natural world whilst their team of Conservation Biologists run field programmes in the UK & Africa in partnership with communities, statutory agencies, and other non-governmental organisations.

It is essential for all staff to not just care about what they and the organisation do but live and breathe those values, what Marwell Wildlife stands for and what they are doing in the world with regard to conservation.

The appointment of an FD will be a new role and will see the successful candidate working in a strategic position during an exciting period of transition. Marwell is working on the development of their 10-year organisational strategy that places wellbeing at the heart of their ethos. They are repositioning itself as a future facing, innovative organisation who not only delivers a world-class conservation output, but that offers an inspiring and enjoyable guest experience which results in impactful and positive behavioural change.

The journey to Marwell 2035 requires an experienced, strategic and energetic FD to work 20 hours per week. This will be a key role in the Executive team, and will help to shape the organisational strategy, financial strategy and income diversification for the charity to be in the best position possible to maximise its charitable outputs. They will be recruiting based on technical ability and organisational fit. Experience in both the charity and visitor attraction sector is preferred.

Role Purpose and Role Dimensions:

• To provide strategic leadership to the Finance team and to work with the CEO to develop and implement a financial strategy in support of the organisational strategy.
• To build key relationships with external stakeholders including donors and financial institutions as well as internal stakeholders including but not limited to the rest of the executive team, the Head of Fundraising and the Board of Trustees.
• To be instrumental in the budgeting process and to complete long-term financial planning and forecasting.
• To present to the Board of Trustees on a regular basis at board meetings and committees.
• To work with the executive on capital development proposals, calculating ROI forecasts and then working with internal team to ensure delivery of capital projects to budget.

Financial Dimensions: Budgeted income is around £12,000,000 per annum. This is made up of restricted and unrestricted income.

The successful FD will

• Be a qualified accountant or have a financial qualification e.g. ACA, ACCA or CIMA
• Have experience in running a sizeable financial department at senior level and within an organisation of comparable scale and complexity
• Commercial awareness of complex organisations or companies
• Have an effective track record in people management/team leadership inc coaching, inspiring and empowering others
• Ideally have charity SORP experience or from within the voluntary sector
• Have experience of dealing with restricted income
• Have experience of tax management
• Have superb systems experience

This role will involve you with having conversations at a high level both internally and externally and looking at the broader picture of the organisation. This is not a hands on, day to day accountant role, it's much more about strategy, about moving at a fast pace and looking at risk, investment options and capital development proposals. You will sit next to the CEO and be her financial opinion at a senior level. You will be able to demonstrate building relationships with donors and financial institutions. This is all about enabling the CEO to take calculated risks.

The successful FD will also fit within the organisation's brand values and the culture of the zoo. You will be engaging, warm and enthusiastic about the opportunities the 10-year strategic plan offers. This is an exciting time for Marwell and you will want to be part of the organisation helping to move it forward.

You will also have the experience of working on a broad spectrum of projects within a complex organisation, as well as looking at the longer term financial strategy/business plan, putting ideas into place. This is very much a case of "we can't do what we have always done"

If this exciting role sounds like you, then you need to move quickly.

PLEASE NOTE 1ST INTERVIEWS WILL TAKE PLACE W/C 5TH AUGUST WITH 2ND INTERVIEWS TAKING PLACE ON 12TH AUGUST