THE ROLE - RELATIONSHIP MANAGER

In this new and exciting position, you will lead the Foundation’s post-award relationship locally and nationally with some of our biggest and most complex capital investments.

A key part of the role will involve working at a strategic level with the Board of Trustees of the National Football Trust – the charity responsible for managing and operating most Hub sites via its dedicated operator, Leisure United. With Foundation colleagues you will work collaboratively with the Trust and Leisure United to ensure outcomes from our Hub investments are maximised by tackling inequalities amongst our four priority audiences.

At a local level, you will begin working with each new Hub project during the build-phase, quickly establishing strong relationships with stakeholders to optimise the programme of use and ensure development plans are focussed on benefitting people living with the greatest challenges. Using your knowledge and experience from your career in sport and leisure to-date, you will lead local stakeholders to engage, design and deliver programmes that will help take the Hubs programme to the next level and ensure partners continue to collaborate to support their Hub post-opening, united by a vision to tackling inequalities for our priority audiences.

You will play a vital role to broaden the programmes and opportunities offered ‘on and off the pitch’ across the Hubs network by forging relationships with a wide range of agencies to develop new initiatives in areas such as health, education, and community development.

You will be trusted and empowered to stretch the outcomes from each Hub investment, using your excellent relationship management skills to work positively to resolve any local barriers to delivery. Your knowledge of the current facility operating environment and understanding of the challenges faced by the grassroots sports community and voluntary sector will allow you to skilfully balance competing priorities for operational sustainability, affordable access, and maximising surplus potential for local re-investment. You will have the awareness and confidence to escalate issues and ask for help when needed; particularly where there’s a financial or reputational risk to the Foundation and you’ll be supported by committed and passionate teammates that will provide guidance and support.

You will help to establish key performance indicators and be responsible for overseeing measurement to effectively monitor the impact and performance of each Hub and lead the reporting to local and national stakeholders. You will also guide and support local stakeholders to identify re-investment priorities for Hub surpluses that will have the biggest impact against their Local Football Facility Plan and the National Football Facilities Strategy, overseeing a recommendation process to the National Football Trust Board.

In addition to the relationship management focus, you will also manage the Football Foundation’s booking system and smart access single supplier framework that will be rolled out across all of our 3G pitch investments and our PlayZones as a minimum. The focus from this part of the role will be to ensure the framework is easy to access and provides high quality management data to both the applicants and the Football Foundation.