Investment Director

About the Investment team

The Investment team is responsible for selecting portfolio partners, managing our charity investments and supporting our portfolio partners to improve and scale their impact.

The Investment team also leads the Impetus Leadership Academy, a leadership development programme to support talent from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK youth sector to progress into senior leadership roles.

The team is made up of 18 people, including former teachers, charity chief executives, charity impact leads, management consultants, social investment portfolio managers and impact consultants.

The team is led by a Portfolio Director who sits on the Senior Management Team. The Portfolio Director has 5 direct reports: a Deputy Portfolio Director, three Sector Leads (who lead our work in school engagement, school attainment and employment sectors) and an Impact Lead. Sector Leads line manage 6 Investment Directors between them. Investment Directors line manage Investment Managers (currently 7). Investment Directors and Investment Managers tend to primarily focus on a sector but might have mixed portfolios, depending on need, experience and interest.

The Investment team has a good track record of role progression. All four Leads and a number of our Investment Directors were promoted from within the team.

About this role

We believe that all young people deserve to succeed in school and in work, whatever their background. As we enter a challenging time with rising inflation and a likely recession, our work feels more vital than ever before. The role of Investment Director presents an exciting opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the charities portfolio partners we serve, the team itself and the whole of Impetus.

We support a portfolio of 23 high potential charity and non-profit partners in the youth sector, helping them deliver benchmark-beating employment and education outcomes for young people, and to grow.

We believe the strength of our approach resides in three things:

• Building deep, trust-based, sustainable relationships with charity leaders by, investing time, kindness, integrity and honesty.
• Providing our charities multi-year, unrestricted funding to help them become sector-leading organisations and scale their impact.
• Offering tailored advice to charity leaders most pressing and strategic questions, including their mission, programme design, performance management, growth planning, and financial resilience.

Working with our portfolio partners is a privilege. The leaders we support are incredibly talented, passionate and keen for external advice, and the issues we work through with them are stimulating and stretching. Our senior management relationships are some of the most fulfilling relationships many of us have had in our careers, while the growth and impact performance of our partners are testament to charities commitment to disadvantaged young people and the influence we have on their development.

Charities and funders often comment on the quality of our people. Our team is analytical and data driven; we are deeply relational, low-ego and collaborative. We actively invest in our colleagues holding regular training and community of practice sessions, and use skills-based assessments to tailor development.

As an organisation we seek to embed diversity of thought, background and experience in every aspect of our work and actively challenge our assumptions to better deliver change. Over the past two years we have taken action to help reduce racial inequality in the youth sector. In 2021 we launched our Connect Fund to support diverse leaders and their robust solutions to the entrenched employment gap faced by young people from ethnic minority backgrounds compared with their white peers. We have also built a highly regarded Leadership Academy for emerging youth sector leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds, with generous funding from State Street Foundation.

If you are looking for a role combining strategic thinking, analytical insight and influencing emerging leaders, as well as the opportunity to work with a supportive team to transform young lives, I hope you will apply to work with us.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sebastien Ergas
Portfolio Director

Key responsibilities
Finding high potential charities and non-profit partners for our portfolio

• Identifying potential charitable organisations for investment.
• Leading and delivering in-depth due diligence process within the scope of a grant round, to assess and build partnership foundations with potential partners covering leadership and governance, and their impact, scale, and partnership potential.
• Modelling from first contact of origination, our approach to engaged and trust-based investment management support.
• Developing and presenting high quality investment propositions to our Investment Committee.

Managing partnerships with portfolio partners

• Managing relationships with partner Chairs and CEOs.
• Agreeing Service Funding Agreements, including appropriate annual investment milestones to allow for a clear assessment of re-investment potential at end of phase.
• Regularly monitoring and assessing partner progress / risks against milestones and making evidence-based recommendations on progression or exit to Leads, Portfolio Director and the Investment Committee.
• Escalating key risks on performance, leadership and safeguarding.
• Conducting annual partnership reviews with Sector Leads and partner CEOs.
• Working with Impetus finance colleagues to ensure timely distribution of grant payments, in line with Service Funding Agreements.

Supporting portfolio partners

• Providing high quality advisory support to CEOs and senior colleagues on key strategic topics, using a mix of at least monthly one-to-one meetings and group facilitation to:

• clarify theory of change
• define long term ambition
• develop growth strategy
• achieve a step change in the delivery and performance management of outcomes
• strengthen leadership (individual and collective) and governance capabilities
• develop path to scale
• build financial resilience

• Scoping and project managing pro bono capacity-building projects (in addition to providing direct management support). Ensure projects are delivered to a high standard and contribute to charity progression.
• Identifying engagement opportunities for our donors and supporters with portfolio partners that are aligned with the partner s activities and do not distract or undermine their core work.
• Collaborating with the Impetus Philanthropy team to support the development of additional funding opportunities for portfolio partners, enhancing their ability to deliver impact at scale.
• Effectively leveraging the support of investment managers to advance the objectives developed for each portfolio partner that is managed by an Investment Director.

Support to Impetus

• Developing expertise about what works in the sector through cultivation and use of expert input and engagement as well as investigation into key research and evaluative literature.
• Contributing insights and learning from portfolio work to inform Impetus strategy, model and delivery, providing evidence based recommendations to senior colleagues
• Contributing to internal priorities and working groups, bringing expertise and insight from portfolio work (e.g. team strategy discussions, digital improvement initiatives, or equity, diversity, and inclusion).
• Contribute towards Impetus public affairs and philanthropy objectives through input into case studies, research and policy campaigns, donor reports and fundraising events.
• Sharing the learning from our work across the team, across the organisation and externally working within Impetus strategy and agreed forums.
• Engaging in Impetus pro bono, communications, and advocacy events, and engage portfolio partners appropriately in these events.
• Line-manage and support one or more Investment Managers, setting clear objectives and providing coaching, feedback and development opportunities to enable them to deliver high quality work and achieve their individual, project and team goals
• Embedding inclusive and equitable practices in portfolio work, ensuring diverse perspectives are considered and barriers to participation are identified and addressed

Person specification

Essential

• A commitment to Impetus mission.
• Senior level responsibility and a strong track record of building trust-based relationships with senior stakeholders, advising them on key strategic decisions, and challenging them in a respectful and collaborative manner.
• A talent for strategic thinking around complex issues.
• Strong financial acumen and analytical skills.
• Understanding of impact measurement and evaluation fundamentals.
• Resilience, tenacity and initiative.
• Ability to adapt personal style to different leadership contexts, working inclusively and effectively with diverse leaders and organisations.
• Growth mind-set to seek out and act on feedback and a commitment to continuous learning and development.
• Proven ability to work independently, and to exercise good judgment.
• Strong planning and time management skills.
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