Company Profile
Purposeful Ventures
Company Overview
Our vision is for a fairer society where all young people thrive. We work with social entrepreneurs, organisations and philanthropists that share our vision. Through our work with these partners, young people are given opportunities in education and beyond, helping them reach their true potential.
Purposeful Ventures offers philanthropists and funders bespoke advice, using an evidence-based approach to help them to identify high-impact opportunities to fund.??We then partner with visionary individuals and mission-driven organisations with strong theories of change. We help them turn great ideas into sustainable and successful ventures by offering fully individualised and very hands-on support, access to funding and a ‘high-challenge, high-support’ home.?We do the minimum necessary and whatever it takes to succeed.
We are working with a wide range of organisations across the following portfolio areas to build and strengthen outstanding organisations that deliver systemic impact.
Children and Families : Our ambition is for every child to grow up in a stable and supportive family environment and to have the opportunity to thrive academically, socially and emotionally. We are partnering with a growing number of outstanding Early Years organisations who work with young children and their parents during the first years of their lives. We also support organisations that work with some of our most vulnerable children, including those in care or those at risk of offending.
STEM Education : We believe that everyone should be able to experience a high quality and inspiring STEM education, and that achievement in STEM can be catalytic in driving social mobility, particularly for those from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds. Organisations in our STEM portfolio support students from disadvantaged backgrounds to success in STEM subjects at a school level and inspire them onto future STEM-aligned careers. As well as our portfolio of organisations, we launched the Maths Excellence Fund in 2023 to improve student attainment and progression in maths.
Music and Arts : We are launching a new fund in Classic Music Excellence, to support more young people from low socio-economic backgrounds to achieve excellence in classical music, enabling them to progress to the highest level and ultimately into the profession should they choose. We are building an exciting grants portfolio and commissioning an in-depth research report into this area.
Company History
Originally built within Ark, the UK educational charity and multi-academy trust, Purposeful Ventures spun out of Ark in September 2023. We have a strong track record of supporting innovation in education and for young people, ranging from Now Teach (teacher recruitment) to Frontline (children’s social work) to STiR Education (international development teacher training).
We are excited to tackle tough issues, offer a broad range of services to philanthropists and collaborate with more partners to drive change.
Benefits
We are an experienced team with backgrounds in strategy consulting, education and non-profit leadership. Together, we have grown multiple charities, collectively making an impact on the lives of over a million young people in the last decade.??
Working here is stimulating with lots of variety. We work at pace with a relentless focus on impact, but we also take time to support colleagues, have fun and learn from one another. We want to work with interesting people who bring diverse perspectives and want to do an excellent job. However, striking a balance between work and outside interests is also important to us.
When asked, people who work at Purposeful Ventures most enjoy
(a) working with smart and passionate colleagues;
(b) solving challenging real-world problems; and
(c) delivering work that translates into tangible impact.
Our benefits:
The opportunity to be part of the TPT (The Pension Trust) scheme, our workplace pension scheme, where we make an 11% contribution; you are not required to contribute towards this scheme unless you choose to?
A commitment to excellence combined with support for your professional and career development
A flexible approach to working with understanding and consideration for work life balance and personal commitments??
27 days annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing to 29 days after two years’ service, then to 30 days after three years’ service (pro rata for part-time employees)
Full office closure between Christmas and New Year?(using three days of your holiday entitlement, pro rata for part-time staff)
Two-week Summer Shutdown, with the expectation that staff use five days of annual leave with five additional days added on top of your annual leave allowance (pro rata for part-time staff)
Hybrid working, with at least Tuesdays and Wednesdays in our state-of-the-art office in West London working alongside colleagues for collaboration, connection and sharing learning?
Onsite showers and bike storage
Access to discount schemes with leading retailers, leisure and travel brands, as well as companies local to our office
Access to an Employee Assistance Programme for advice and support including counselling