Employer: Achates
Location: This is a home-based, we are open to applications from across the country, with one day of co-working in London per month required (with travel at employees’ own expense)
Temporary: 11-month contract
Working hours: 3 days a week
Salary: £54,000-£57,500 pro rata
Closing date: 9am on Monday 30 November 2026
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Cultural sector consultancy company, Achates, is seeking a Senior Consultant (maternity cover) to join us and work across our Income Generation and Recruitment divisions. This role will provide strategic and practical support in income generation, and recruitment, to a range of clients across the cultural sector.
This is a home-based, flexible role available 3 days a week and we are open to applications from across the country, with one day of co-working in London per month required (with travel at employees’ own expense). Travel to and from meetings with clients is reimbursed.
This is a maternity cover position offered as a 11-month contract from February 2027.
About Achates
Achates is a leading cultural consultancy taking a purpose-led, audience-informed approach to our work. We enable our clients to achieve resilience with integrity. Our work spans Strategy and Business Planning; Earned and Contributed Income Generation; Recruitment and Organisational Change. By defining the distinctive purpose of each organisation, we create a coherent approach to culture from a purpose-led perspective.
We’re passionate about culture and heritage. We care about investing in strong relationships with audiences and know that good governance is essential for organisations to thrive. Our holistic approach brings these key elements together to optimise impact and income for our clients and their audiences.
We often work with clients at moments of transition – whether that is developing and implementing new operating models, capacity building, identifying new approaches to income generation, realising capital projects, or changes in senior leadership or governance. We don’t just consult; our unique methodologies and resources support and bolster an organisation’s skills and capacity to optimise both impact and income.
Our ethos is based on quality of service – that's how we came by our name. In Virgil's Aeneid, Achates was the close friend and loyal advisor of Trojan leader, Aeneas. We thought this described the exact relationship we offer our clients.
Main Purpose of the Role
This role will work across two of Achates’ three divisions – Income Generation and Recruitment & Organisational Change – providing high-level fundraising and recruitment support for a wide range of Achates clients.
Within Recruitment, the postholder will support the Director of Recruitment & Organisational Change to assess recruitment needs and define clear search parameters, conduct extensive research to identify suitable candidates and hold initial conversations for a range of roles across the sector, including Chairs, Chief Executives and Development Directors.
Within Income Generation, the postholder will play a key role in developing fundraising feasibility studies and strategies for clients across revenue and capital fundraising, research prospects, develop logic models and funding bids and work on new earned income strategies alongside the Director of Income Generation.
The Senior Consultant will report to the Director of Recruitment & Organisational Change and will also work closely with the Director of Income Generation, and the Consultant.
Who we are looking for
You will be an experienced and strategically minded arts professional with excellent research skills in a fundraising context. You will have a thorough understanding of the cultural fundraising landscape in terms of trusts and foundations, individual philanthropy, and corporate partnerships, and will be someone who is motivated by helping organisations to identify and target new and wider sources of funding, based on a strong theory of change model.
Across our recruitment work, you will be able to transfer your fundraising skills to candidate research, candidate engagement and client management, working alongside the Director of Recruitment & Organisational Change to identify and approach outstanding individuals for senior development, executive and creative leadership, and trustee/chair roles. In doing so, you will strengthen our inclusion-led approach, ensuring that we help our clients to take positive action in approaching a more diverse candidate pool than is currently represented in the cultural sector.
Role Overview
This is a client facing role with a monthly target of billable days to be split across Income Generation and Recruitment projects. The postholder will work with a range of cultural organisations to support them with the recruitment of new staff and Trustees and fundraising guidance and support.
Consultancy delivered is likely to cover product areas including:
Income Generation
• Reviewing background documents to develop an understanding of an organisation and leading client inception meetings to define the parameters of a project
• Identifying priority audience groups, types of value, Logic Models and Theories of Change
• Playing a key role in the development of Fundraising Feasibility Studies and Fundraising Strategies for clients, which address both revenue and capital fundraising
• Developing and implementing individual giving fundraising strategies including donor journeys
• Devising corporate fundraising strategies and offers, incuding building pitch decks
• Developing master bids, revenue and capital applications, and supporting organisations to cultivate and steward trusts and foundations
• Undertake prospect research and network mapping on trust and foundations, individual philanthropists and corporates with the propensity to support cultural sector organisations, for standalone research projects
Recruitment
• Participating in and leading client inception meetings with the Director of Recruitment & Organisational Change to investigate the parameters of recruitment
• Researching and making approaches to suitable candidates for a range of roles across development, creative and executive leadership, and trustee positions
• Conducting pre-interview conversations with interested candidates and representing the client organisation when answering candidate questions about the role and wider organisation
• Providing client support on recruitment assignments across advertising copy, including supporting with advert placement and ensuring copy is inclusive and clear
• Leading on recruitment processes for more junior roles, particularly in Development, for the arts and cultural sector, supporting the whole process from inception meeting to recruitment as required by the client
• Maintaining the Achates recruitment database on Hubspot ensuring the highest standards in data management and ensuring efficiency of the research process is maximised through our existing networks
Alongside this work, you will support tht development and delivery of other Achates products, Including Achates Community, our dedicated membership platform for cultural sector charity sector employees offering online learning, one-to-one support, a leadership programme and community space, and our free to access free to access Achates Live! and Achates Inspires webinars.
In addition to consultancy, the Senior Consultant will be required to input to a number of areas as defined by the Director of Recruitment and Organisational Change and the Director of Income Generation, to include:
Strategy and Leadership
• As a senior member of the Achates team, to contribute to strategy and new product development
• Take a lead in utilising, maintaining and encouraging the best of use of Achates’ client and candidate database, HubSpot, developing it as an effective organisational tool
• To attend staff away days and other events as required
• To keep other team members informed of key developments, especially on projects where there are several strands of activity
• To remain up to date on UK cultural sector policy developments
• To develop a network of cultural sector contacts
Business Development
• To actively develop new business through networks and speaking engagements
• To act as an ambassador for Achates and our audience informed approach
• To attend pitch meetings and to contribute to proposals for clients
• To support Achates Live! and Achates Inspires events as required
Other
Other tasks as required by the Director of Recruitment & Organisational Change.
Person Specification
You will be an experienced arts/cultural sector fundraiser, with a particular strength across prospect and wider research activity. You will have acted at manager level, should be able to work independently and at pace to interpret and contribute to strategic income generation and recruitment.
As outlined above, you will have the capacity to transfer your skills from fundraising research and relationship management to candidate research and management for our recruitment clients and will be supported in this by the Director of Recruitment & Organisational Change, who has substantive experience in this area.
The attributes we are looking for in our Senior Consultant are:
• Substantive experience in arts fundraising with a strong research focus
• A good understanding of the cultural fundraising landscape across:
i. Trusts and foundations, and how they are influencing and responding to wider cultural policy
ii. Individual philanthropy, and the wider motivations of existing wealth networks and newer philanthropic trends
iii. Motivations for corporate partnership or sponsorship, and how to maximise engagement
• A good knowledge of the wider cultural landscape and the ability to translate this into sector wide research for senior individuals
• Experience of using and optimising fundraising or similar databases
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate with clients and candidates, and present research in timely and clear formats.
Philanthropy
Being an ethical business is central to our aims and we ask all the staff team to sign up to our approach. The company has since its inception donated at least 10% of its profits to the sector, principally via the Cultural Philanthropy Foundation and we ask all staff to actively support and promote its initiatives, including the Achates Philanthropy Prize, and the Thought Leadership Lecture.
Equality and Diversity
Achates is committed to equality of opportunity in all its activities and employment practices and working towards a more representative workforce is a key driver behind our Achates Recruits division. We actively encourage people from a variety of backgrounds with different experiences, skills, and stories to join us and influence and develop our working practice.
As we work to address underrepresentation in the wider arts and culture sector workforce, we are particularly keen to hear from applicants from underrepresented,groups, including applicants from global majority backgrounds, candidates who are D/disabled or those with other protected characteristics. Candidates who identify as global majority and/or as D/deaf or D/disabled and can demonstrate substantive experience in arts/culture fundraising and research, meeting the criteria detailed above will be guaranteed an interview.
Salary and Terms
This is a maternity cover post offered on an initial 11-month contract.
The post is offered 3 days a week, with flexibility within the parameters of this model for caring responsibilities, at a salary of £54,000-£57,500 pro rata, depending on experience.
All Achates staff are offered a 7% pension contribution after 3 months of employment and 22 days holiday pro rata as well as all public holidays.
The post is home-based, with regular monthly co-working days in central London. The post holder will be responsible for their own travel costs to these co-working days. The role may also require national travel to meet with clients; travel expenses for client meetings will be covered by Achates. For meetings within London, travel costs to the main London terminals will be reimbursed. All employees are provided with a laptop to support home-based working, where required.
Members of the team are currently based in locations including London, the South-East, and the North of England.
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