Project Manager - West Midlands Racial Justice Initiative

Overview

Who are we and what are we about?

Are you passionate about racial justice in the Church and committed to eliminating racism?  Do you want to use your skills to challenge, encourage, enable understanding and effect change where it is needed? If you’re excited to join a team appointed to be a catalyst for the promotion of racial justice and elimination of racism in the West Midlands Church of England dioceses, read on. 

As Church of England Dioceses in the West Midlands, Church of England Birmingham alongside the dioceses of Coventry, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield and Worcester are excited to have funding from the Racial Justice Unit to recruit a team of 11 people.  That team will help us ensure that structures, practices and behaviours throughout our Church and churches embrace people of GMH and UKME backgrounds and enable them to flourish.  The whole team includes a Director, Programme Manager, Theologian, Communications Catalyst, six development workers each with a different focus, and a support worker.  The team has 3 years to enable us to fan into flame a movement of change within us that continues to be effective and transformative long beyond the funding.

The team will be responsible for supporting the development of activities in our widely diverse contexts.  Those activities include: sharing theological insights informed by our cultural origins; sharing worship practices; reviewing participation in our structures and activities; inviting previously unheard contributions into our governance structures; deconstructing whiteness; reimagining invitation into parish and community activities; and working in church schools and among young people.  Relationships between people in all parts of us matter as much as the composition of our committees.  The team will be accountable to a Regional Racial Justice Board made up of people from each of our dioceses committed to effecting change in these areas.

Introduction

The Project Manager’s Role

The purpose of this role is to work collaboratively with the participating dioceses and the Regional Racial Justice Team to ensure that this project has the intended impact.  Managing activities across the participating dioceses, the postholder will ensure that identified outcomes are delivered in a timely way and within the constraints of available resource (time and money).  The postholder will also be responsible for ensuring that qualitative and quantitative data is collected to measure outcomes and outputs against agreed targets. 

Main Responsibilities

The postholder will need to be able to

• Work collaboratively with participating dioceses, the Regional Racial Justice Director and Team, and the Regional Racial Justice Board
• Manage projects making sure that they are well planned, financially robust and that they have everything in place to make the desired impact
• Manage the project’s finances
• Understand and work with the depth, breadth and complexity of working across the region and in that context create appropriate and effective management tools to support the impact of activity including establishing and maintaining appropriate systems
• Understand the need for and provide support in identifying the qualitative as well as quantitative data required to satisfy the funder that agreed outcomes are being met
• Manage the production of project reports and ensure that they satisfy the Racial Justice Unit’s requirements and feed into wider diocesan governance structures
• Write reports that communicate appropriately to recipients

In particular the role requires that the postholder:

• Manages a series of projects so they are well run and achieve the desired impact
• Builds strong relationships within the Regional Racial Justice Team and key people within each participating diocese, holding their confidence and being able to persuade and influence
• Creates and updates, and where appropriate provides support to create and update, project plans, budgets (where budgeted resource may be not only money), stakeholder and risk management documents and processes
• Manages finances and financial reporting to the Regional Racial Justice Board
• Supports, trains and encourages with the Team and participating dioceses
• Working with an external partner enables and ensures the development of a regional framework for measuring progress over a 10 year period, including establishing a baseline for the region and appropriate baselines for each diocese against which progress can be measured
• Establishes systems for and implements the collection and recording of data across the participating dioceses, where necessary offer training and support to ensure that processes are managed
• Produces regular reports to monitor progress and identify development opportunities
• Contributes to creating a culture within the region where data collection is seen as beneficial
• Sets up the platforms necessary for the collection of data and production of reports, enabling training where necessary
• Supports problem solving on projects to enable outcomes to be achieved.

There is expertise within the Regional Racial Justice Board, participating dioceses and the newly appointed team to enable and inform this role.

The Ideal Candidate

Person Specification

We are looking for someone who:

• Is passionate about seeing people from UKME/GMH backgrounds realise their full potential in God’s mission and the Church’s ministry.
• Is excited to work within the vision for the project
• Can combine this passion and enthusiasm with an ability to build relationships with a diverse range of people
• Is able to persuade and influence stakeholders to varying degrees, as and when appropriate.
• Can manage multiple concurrent projects, be able to assess priority and act accordingly
• Posseses a good understanding of Project Management processes & methodologies (plans, risk, communications, reporting, finance)
• Is able to work with colleagues, partners and stakeholders to collect required project data and ideally be experienced in collecting data themselves.
• Has experience in managing projects. Preferably within a church or charity environment
• Is supportive of the Church of England and a willingness to work within its frameworks.
• Posseses good verbal and written skills and able to communicate effectively with a broad range of colleagues, partners and stakeholders.
• Enjoys and is confident in using a broad range of IT solutions and media.
• Has good self-awareness and the ability to reflect.
• Is friendly and warm in their persona with an ability to work well with a wide diversity of people.
• Is a team player who will work to empower, support and encourage others, whilst being able to self-motivate.
• Has the ability to travel the length and breadth of the six dioceses of the project 

About us

Terms and Conditions

This is a fixed-term contract for the three years of funding provided for this project

Hours:  Full-time 35 hours (5 days) per week. Some weekend/evening work may be required, for which the equivalent time may be taken back from standard working hours

Salary and Pension: Salary of £40,000 plus membership of the Church Worker’s Pension Scheme with 12% employer contribution

Holidays: 5 weeks per year plus Bank Holidays and 3 Discretionary Days between Christmas and New Year

Employer: Birmingham Diocesan Board of Finance

Responsible To: The Regional Racial Justice Director

CLOSING DATE: SUNDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2024

INTERVIEWS TO BE HELD IN BIRMINGHAM ON THURSDAY 14 MARCH 2024

This post is supported by funding from the Church of England Racial Justice Unit