Head of Business Development
Employer: Magic Breakfast
Location: Home based. This post holder will be based at home with regular travel across England. The role will involve some irregular travel across the rest of the UK. Travel expenses will be paid in line with our Travel Expenses Policy.
Working hours: Ideally full-time, 35 hours per week, although 28 hours may be considered. The role may require occasional evening and weekend work
Salary: £48,500 per annum
Closing date: 11:00pm, 30th Nov 2025 GMT
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Head of Business Development
Job Description and Person Specification
Reporting to: Director of Fundraising and Development
Direct reports: Three
Location of work: Home based. This post holder will be based at home with regular travel across England. The role will involve some irregular travel across the rest of the UK. Travel expenses will be paid in line with our Travel Expenses Policy.
Contract type: Ideally full-time, 35 hours per week, although 28 hours may be considered. The role may require occasional evening and weekend work
Contract Length: Permanent
Salary: £48,500
BACKGROUND
Magic Breakfast’s mission is to end child morning hunger in the UK now and for good. The latest research suggests that 2.7 million children are at risk of hunger, meaning one in five children don’t have enough to eat. When a child is too hungry to learn, they struggle to concentrate, absorb information, and manage their emotions, causing them to fall behind in their studies.
Magic Breakfast provides a nutritious breakfast to over 300,000 children and young people every school day. We work with schools in areas of high disadvantage, helping staff target children most in need without barrier or stigma.
We are now at an exciting point in our journey as we launch Nourishing Futures, our long-term strategy, which will scale our impact and redefine breakfast spaces not only as places to eat, but as places to thrive.
To support the delivery of this strategy, we are evolving our Business Development function with the creation of a new role – Head of Business Development. This role will enable continue growth and investment from public funding sources, whilst ensuring that we are able and positioned to capitalise on the growing number of commercial opportunities. It will also lead a move towards more innovative and blended income models across England, Wales and Scotland.
JOB PURPOSE
The Head of Business Development will set the vision and direction for increasing revenue from public funding and for maximising commercial opportunities with a target of £1m in the financial year 25/26. A core part of the role will be identifying and delivering blended income streams that span commissioning, corporate partnerships, and philanthropy, ensuring ambitious and sustainable growth while providing excellent leadership to a newly expanded team.
You will be responsible for establishing a cohesive function with clear systems, processes, and ways of working across the organisation — ensuring alignment from prospecting and procurement through to delivery and implementation.
In addition, the postholder will act as a Director of Magic Outcomes, Magic Breakfast’s trading subsidiary, playing a key role in exploring and realising commercial opportunities. This will include developing insight into how Magic Outcomes can complement and enhance Magic Breakfast’s charitable mission and working with the Director of Finance and Technology to ensure strong governance and alignment between the two entities.
Working closely with colleagues across the organisation and within the income generation department, you will also act as an innovation hub, horizon-scanning for opportunities, shaping strategic responses, and enabling the design of complex, cross-cutting income models. By championing blended approaches and fostering collaboration across teams, you will unlock funding that bridges public and philanthropic giving while strengthening the charity’s long-term sustainability.
You will also play a key role within the Fundraising Leadership, deputising for the Director of Fundraising & Development where required, and working closely with peers to implement, monitor, and adapt our new fundraising strategy. This leadership role will extend across the organisation as part of the wider leadership team, requiring strong collaboration and strategic thinking to maximise opportunities and deliver against our business plan and strategic objectives.
Key responsibilities:
Strategy and Leadership
Lead the Business Development function as an innovation hub, proactively horizonscanningfor opportunities across public funding, commercial activity, and philanthropicgiving. Ensure the team can respond with agility and flex resources to pursue the moststrategic and sizeable opportunities, including blended income streams and complex,multi-strand bids or partnerships that span commissioning, corporate, and philanthropy.
Coach, lead and support the Business Development team (BD Manager England &Wales, BD Manager Scotland, BD Executive), setting clear objectives, KPIs, and expectations for income growth and performance and ensuring a values-driven culture.
Embed a data- and insight-driven review process to enable continuous improvement and informed decision-making.
Work collaboratively across the fundraising leadership team to ensure it operates as a cohesive, high-performing unit that acts with agility to plan, pivot and make strategic decisions that maximise opportunities and drive growth.
Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and accountability across the wider business development team, ensuring joined-up ways of working with fundraising colleagues and across the wider organisation.
Act as a senior leader within the wider leadership team, contributing to cross organisational planning, budget setting, and enabling strategies, while taking a leading and active role in sub-goal delivery to ensure effective implementation of the fundraising strategy, organisational goals, and long-term strategic vision.
Represent Magic Breakfast externally as a spokesperson and internally as part of the
Fundraising Leadership Team.
Ensure compliance with procurement processes, contracts, GDPR, safeguarding, and relevant charity law, embedding ethical business development across the function and taking responsibilities for operationalising of and adherence to all of Magic Breakfast’s policies and processes.
Serve as a Director on Magic Outcomes, driving commercial income opportunities, ensuring alignment with Magic Breakfast’s mission, integrating activities across both entities, and advising on strategies to maximise blended income, sustainability, and social impact.
Public Funding
Drive growth in public funding by securing contracts with local authorities, devolved governments, health and education commissioners, multi-academy trusts, and other public bodies.
Lead the development of a regional engagement strategy, ensuring Magic Breakfast is positioned with combined authorities, consortia, and commissioners as a partner of choice.
Work closely with Service Delivery colleagues to build on-the-ground relationships in key regions, co-designing delivery models and supporting local engagement.
Oversee the preparation of high-quality tenders, bids, and proposals, ensuring they are evidence-based, competitive, and strategically aligned.
Ensure delivery and reporting commitments from commissioned contracts are realistic, achievable, and fully aligned with Service Delivery teams, enabling robust monitoring, evaluation, and funder reporting.
Ensure effective coordination and intelligence-sharing across nations and regions, working closely with the BD Managers in Scotland and England & Wales to avoid duplication and maximise opportunities.
Innovation and New Opportunities
Champion the development of innovative income opportunities by working closely with relevant teams, including Partnerships and Major Giving, and the wider organisation, ensuring initiatives are strategically aligned, deliverable, and, where appropriate, transitioned to the right team for ongoing management.
Identify and pursue complex, multi-strand funding opportunities that bring together commissioned income, philanthropy, and corporate support.
Horizon-scan for new trends and opportunities in education, health, and child poverty funding, ensuring Magic Breakfast remains at the forefront of sector developments.
Develop and test innovative approaches to business development, generating insight and learning to inform the organisation’s long-term growth strategy.
Collaboration and Organisational Alignment
Work collaboratively across the fundraising leadership team and wider organisation to identify opportunities, synergies, and efficiencies, championing the role of Business. Development in driving income generation and ensuring its strategic contribution is understood and supported across other departments.
Apply a strong understanding of Magic Breakfast’s goals, strategies, and business plan to inform Business Development activity, ensuring all initiatives are aligned with organisational priorities and contribute to long-term objectives.
Support seamless end-to-end processes, from prospecting and procurement through to contract mobilisation and delivery.
Collaborate across the wider Income Generation and wider departments to pursue blended income opportunities and ensure coordinated engagement with funders, donors, and corporate partners.
Work with trustees, senior leaders, and volunteers to open networks and support senior level engagement with public funders and service providers.
Reporting, Budgets, and Financial Management
• Conduct annual planning and budgeting in partnership with the Director of Fundraising & Development, setting, measuring, and reporting against agreed KPIs.
• Prepare phased budgets and reforecasts, identifying and managing risks and opportunities to income.
• Ensure all business development activity and income is accurately recorded on Salesforce and relevant systems, with appropriate contracts, restrictions, and compliance in place.
• Provide regular reports and insights to the Senior Leadership Team and Board as required
PERSON SPECIFICATION:
Knowledge and Experience
• Significant experience of securing and managing funding contracts from a range of sources, ideally in the education, health, or social impact sectors.
• Proven experience of leading, motivating, and developing high-performing multi-tiered teams to deliver on ambitious funding targets.
• A strong track record of managing contracts and commercial operations and processes, including negotiating agreements, ensuring compliance, and maximising income opportunities.
• Proven experience of leading or contributing to complex, multi-stakeholder bid processes, including those involving government bodies and corporate organisations, ensuring coordinated approaches and maximised funding outcomes
• Experience of strategic planning, budget management, and financial reporting.
• Demonstrable track record of identifying, cultivating, and securing strategic partnerships.
• Knowledge of the funding landscape in England, Wales, and Scotland, including philanthropic income and devolved government priorities and regional engagement opportunities.
• Experience of cross-team collaboration and embedding effective systems and processes across organisations.
• Experience of innovation in funding models, including piloting new approaches and blended income opportunities.
• Knowledge of procurement, contracting, and compliance requirements in a charity or public sector setting.
Skills and Abilities
• Outstanding leadership and relationship-building skills, able to inspire confidence internally and externally.
• Excellent communication, influencing, and presentation skills, with the ability to engage senior stakeholders and commissioners.
• Strong strategic thinking, with the ability to balance big-picture vision with detail-oriented delivery.
• Skilled in preparing high-quality proposals, tenders, and bids that align with commissioner priorities.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on innovation and continuous improvement.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, Salesforce (or similar CRM), and project management tools (e.g., Asana).
Other
• Passion and commitment to Magic Breakfast’s aim of alleviating morning hunger as a to learning for children in the UK.
• Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace and in stakeholder engagement.
• Willingness to travel across the UK and occasionally work outside of regular office hours.
• Experience of working in children and young people’s charities, or in education/health commissioning, is desirable but not essential.
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