Letter from the hiring manager
Dear Applicant,
Many charities will tell you it is a great time to join, for Pratham UK it is undeniably the case. Over the last three years we have tripled income in the UK from around £500k to £1.5m with the realistic ambition to more than triple again.
The core programme of our Indian partner charity, the Pratham Education Foundation, has been identified by the World Bank, Unicef and the FCDO as the best intervention to support children in low and middle-income countries to catch up on lost learning. It is a model that we’ve worked with 2019 Nobel Economics Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo to perfect. We can now teach children to read, write and do basic maths in 30 days for £14.
Our sister charity in the US, Pratham USA raised $27m in 2022 to support this work, with a further $20m raised in India. This allows us to reach over 500,000 children in over 10,000 communities each year with another 5,000,000 reached thriough partnerships with state governments in India.
The initial growth in the UK has largely come from grants, our gala and wider philanthropy. We have not engaged our community well enough and this role will be key to changing that. You will be a great copywriter and MailChimp wizard who can segment our supporters, build welcome journeys and newsletters, and work with colleagues to develop content for event attendees. You will also manage our social media and website and thank retail donors.
You will be able to draw on the communications colleagues in Pratham USA and in the Pratham Education Foundation in India, recycling strategy and content where appropriate and getting support on any areas where you have less experience. You can also draw on the Pratham USA tech team around MailChimp/Salesforce integrations and other tech requirements.
We closed our office during the pandemic and have no plans to open a new one, we are now fully remote and virtually paperless. We are very flexible about how the hours in this role will be covered. We fully subscribe to the Non Grads Welcome and Show the Salary campaigns and share interview questions in advance. If this role interests you but you are unsure if you tick every box, please email me to arrange a chat about how we can make the role work for you.
Nick Sankey
Director of Fundraising [email protected]
Basic information
Job title: Digital Manager (Fundraising and Communications) – title can be negotiated
Responsible to: Director of Fundraising
Indirect reports to: Pratham USA Communications team
Responsible for: None
Hours: 21 hours, over 3, 4 or 5 days.
Salary: up to £40k prorata (£24k)
Contract length: Permanent with six months probation
Pension: Employer 4.5% if Employee contributes 5% after three months.
Holidays: 25 days + 8 Bank Holidays (pro rata)
Location: Fully remote but ideally with access to London.
Closes: Midnight 9th March
Interviews: W/C 13th March
Pratham UK is an equal opportunities employer that actively promotes diversity and strongly encourages applications from within Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities and under-represented groups.
Pratham is an incredible organisation. It is one of the largest education NGOs in India but not well known outside India. In the words of Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee, “Pratham’s impact on the lives of millions of kids has been tremendous; it is quite simply an exceptional, best-in-class organisation that has managed to scale across India.” We have won many prizes, including the Kravis Prize, the Skoll Award, the WISE Prize and the LUI Che Woo Prize; most recently, our CEO in India won the Yidan Prize for Education, the world’s most prestigious education prize.
Our work
We conduct high-quality, low-cost and replicable interventions to address gaps in the education system. Our best-known programme, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), teaches basic literacy and numeracy in as little as 30 days for £14 per student. We offer this in 10,000 villages in 21 states in India. The World Bank has recognised this model as an important method to make up for lost learning due to the pandemic. Pre-pandemic we reached 500,000 children in India each year with fundraised income and a further 5,000,000 children through partnerships with state governments.
We also offer an Early Childhood Development programme focusing on school readiness. Our Second Chance programme supports women back to school to complete their class ten exams, the gateway into the formal economy. Our vocational training programme is exceptional and has helped 100,000 young people into the formal economy in 10 years. We were at the forefront of non-profit EdTech before the pandemic and it is now central to many of our programmes. Through our arms-length partner, the ASER Centre we run the ASER survey, one of the largest annual educational surveys in the world that has moved the educational policy debate in India from inputs to learning outcomes.
Pratham UK
The Pratham Education Foundation raises around $20m in India each year. Pratham USA raises an additional $27m, predominantly from major donors. In the UK, we have historically raised around £500k a year, largely from a high-end gala, in 2021/2 we raised £1.2m and we will be close to £1.5 in 2022/3 and are well-placed for significant future growth. Our trustee board, which is incredibly well-connected, has big ambitions for the organisation, and we are now ready to build out the UK fundraising team. When we see positive results we are ready to grow those areas further and quickly.
Pratham UK is a purely fundraising organisation with all programmes managed by our Indian colleagues however we work closely with them and they are always ready to join donor calls etc. We are beginning to integrate further with Pratham USA and can draw on their resources and support including a much larger comms team which you can take content and strategy and adapt to the UK needs and a Tech team that can support with the integrations and other tech requirements.
Currently, our three biggest sources of income are our gala, major donors and grants. We don’t talk to anyone else enough, but we get good results when we do. You will lead our conversations with the community and support the major donor and special events team with their communications. We use MailChimp and Salesforce which are integrated, as is our main website donation platform – donorbox. Specifically, you will build donor journeys and regular email communications on MailChimp. You will run our social media channels, you will be responsible for keeping the website fresh and up-to-date. You will also lead on thanking retail donors.
Specific responsibilities
- Managementof MailChimp – and the mailing lists within
- Creating variations of newsletters for different segments and working withthe Philanthropy and Special Events team to mail gala attendees, patrons
- Creatingautomated donor journeys for new sign-ups
- Keepingan up-to-date content calendar that reflects yearly
- Management of social media channels, coordinating with teams in India and USA to produceinspiring social content that is on-message and in line with brand
- Therewill be a small budget to test social campaigns
- Facebookbirthdays
- Engage with our followers and wider audiences to increase reach, followingand brand advocacy
- Leadappeals such as the Big Give and Radio 4 (if the application is successful)
- Measureand review campaign performance to support organisational learning
- Update website (WordPress) and donation pages to keep them fresh and aligned tocampaigns and
- Thankall retail
Required Skills and Experience
- UnderstandingMailChimp or similar
- Copywriting
Desirable Skills and Experience / areas we will support you to develop
- DigitalFundraising
- Experiencemanaging social media
- Salesforce| Mailchimp integrations
- Websitemanagement
- Demonstratedempathy for India
- Demonstratedempathy for international development and/or mass education
- Segmentingdatabases
How to apply
To apply please send your CV and a short note highlighting your key skills and why you want to work for Pratham UK to [email protected] with the job title in the subject line.
If you wish to speak to the hiring manager Nick Sankey, Director of Fundraising, then please email [email protected] to arrange a time.