Description

This is a fantastic opportunity for an individual who is passionate about using their evaluation and broader research skills to improve social mobility and tackle educational inequality.  

As Purposeful Ventures' Evaluation Manager you will work in a newly forming evaluation team, as part of a larger experienced and growing organisation, alongside inspirational charities and social enterprises to successfully grow and deliver systemic change.

Purposeful Ventures is currently developing a framework to better understand our impact as an organisation and our approach to monitoring and evaluation for our projects and portfolio organisations. This evaluation work is intended to allow us and the organisations we work with to learn, and to support internal accountability and decision-making.

You will have a crucial role in implementing our developing approaches to monitoring and evaluation to better understand and learn about our impact as an organisation and supporting our portfolio organisations to better understand and maximise the difference they make for young people. 

You will work closely with both internal and external colleagues, using your technical evaluation skills to provide evaluation support to our portfolio organisations, aligned with sector standards and programme maturity, to inform programme design, delivery and communication of impact.

Successful candidates will have demonstrable experience and success in evaluation roles. This may include research roles in a research agency or other settings designing and delivering robust evaluations for funders or the charitable sector.

Responsibilities and duties

• Work with the Evaluation Lead to establish Purposeful Ventures’ monitoring and evaluation framework
• Work with Purposeful Ventures colleagues to ensure the effective design, delivery, monitoring and reporting of portfolio activities, in line with our evaluation standards and principles
• Strengthen Venture approaches to evaluation of their activities and use of findings to improve programme design and delivery
• Design, commission and manage high quality external evaluation and research activity to meet our research objectives
• Support colleagues with advice and guidance about impact, evaluation and broader research expertise

Requirements

• Passionate about transforming the life chances of children and young people through entrepreneurship and innovation in education and related fields
• Sound knowledge, skills and experience in a range of social research methods, including theory-based evaluation
• Substantial experience and proven success in evaluation roles in/ or with the not-for-profit and/or social enterprise sectors
• Substantial experience of working with stakeholders to understand their programme theory, and proven success in leading the design and delivery of evaluations, providing formative and summative findings to inform programme and/or policy development
• Experience commissioning research would be an advantage but is not essential
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complex information clearly
• Strong interpersonal and influencing skills with the ability to gain credibility with key internal and external stakeholders, including academics, senior charity executives and social entrepreneurs
• Excellent project and stakeholder management skills with the proven ability to hold people to account and achieve project outcomes
• A proactive approach with the ability to work independently, problem solve and act on initiative where appropriate
• Flexible, highly-organised and able to prioritise work to meet deadlines
• Happy to work with a degree of ambiguity, creating processes and ways forwards where they might not yet exist