Community Giving Lead
Job Type
Commitment: Full-time, 40hrs per week; Permanent, subject to a three month probationary period
Pay
£28,000 - £36,000 per year. We have a flat pay structure determined by a set of factors including level of experience, place of living, and other contextual considerations to ensure fairness and accessibility across the team.
Location
Remote or hybrid, with strong recommendation to visit the Hackney office on a regular basis (travel expenses covered if not based in London).
Intro
Why we need you
This role builds and owns our community giving programme: the people who give to Animal Rising every month, and the income that pays for the campaigns. It is an exciting time to join. We have just launched our most ambitious campaign yet, and this is a rare chance to own an entire programme rather than a corner of one, and to be part of creating lasting legal and moral change in Britain. It is for someone mission-driven and looking to make their mark in the animal movement, who loves people, is not shy about asking them for money, and wants to know why one subject line raised three times what another did.
Animal Rising is a nonviolent, people-powered organisation working towards a sustainable future where humanity shares a positive relationship with animals and nature. In 2023 our intervention at the Grand National achieved nine front pages and hours of broadcast air-time. In 2024 we built a network of investigators who carried out the largest farm investigation the UK has ever seen, exposing the myth of welfarism at RSPCA Assured farms. Our latest campaign takes on the scale of factory farming itself. We work in an ethic of service. Roles are held loosely rather than defended, people are flexible about what they pick up, and when something big lands everyone digs in.
Campaigns like this are funded by ordinary people who care, and that base is what you will build. It pays for the next investigation, the next court case and the next front page. You own the whole of it: the relationships, the writing, the appreciation, the testing, and where it goes next.
Now is your chance to build the base that makes it possible.
Key Responsibilities and Expectations
1. Donor Relationships
The heart of the role. It will be your responsibility to build real relationships with the people who fund this work, and to keep them giving because they want to, not because nobody got round to cancelling.
Calls and personal contact with monthly and mid-level donors
Thank yous, welcome contact, milestone and anniversary moments
Lapsed donor outreach and reactivation
Responding to donor enquiries warmly and quickly
2. Community Appreciation
Making supporters feel part of something, not just a name on a list. This is as important as the ask, and it is the part most organisations quietly drop when things get busy. We would rather you did not.
Appreciation moments: a handwritten card, a thank you video, a welcome pack, a small piece of merch
Supporter events, meet ups and get togethers, online and in person
Small group calls and one to one conversations with supporters who want a closer relationship
A warm, active supporter presence on social, building belonging rather than broadcasting, with Comms
Bringing donors together so the base feels like a community, not a mailing list
3. Written Asks, Donor Psychology, and Testing
The postholder writes these and improves them. We want someone who is genuinely interested in why people give, and who treats every email, page and form as something that can be made to work harder. The split with Comms is set before you start. This role writes the regular donor emails, thank yous, welcome journeys and standalone appeals. Campaign emails stay with Comms, and this role has a say in how the ask inside them is framed. It means working closely with Comms and the campaign rather than alongside them.
Writes and owns the regular donor emails, thank yous, welcome journeys and appeals, plus landing page and donation form copy, and shapes how the ask is framed in campaign emails written by Comms
Runs A/B tests on subject lines, send times, sender name, ask amounts and button wording, and writes down what won and by how much
Rewrites the donation page and tests the new version against the old one rather than assuming it is better
Tries three suggested amounts on an appeal, sees what it does to average gift, and sets the defaults accordingly
Watches where people drop out of the donation form and fixes the step that is losing them
Tests the small human things too: a handwritten card against a standard thank you email, a video against text, a phone call against neither
Reads what other fundraisers are doing, borrows the good ideas, and tries them here
Gathers stories from calls, supporters and campaign leads, and turns them into donor facing content
Works with the Comms team on editing, scheduling, design and tone consistency
4. Keeping Track
This is how the warm work shows up as results, and how you get to prove what you have built. It is also how you make sure nobody who backed us quietly falls through a gap.
Keeps donor and monthly giving records accurate and current
Weekly figures on new monthly donors, cancellations and failed payments
Monthly note on retention, acquisition source, what you tested and what it changed
Running fundraising campaigns and appeals to an agreed calendar
Testing acquisition routes such as petition conversion, ads and partnerships, with Comms
Scoping the CRM replacement from a user point of view. What the current system cannot do, where the workarounds are, and what good would look like. A short written note, not a project plan.
Not in this Role
Grants, trusts and foundations
Major donors and corporate giving
Key Skills
Warmth with people. You genuinely like them, and phoning someone you have never met powers you up rather than drains you.
Writing that sounds like a person. You can write something warm in twenty minutes and press send. This is the skill the role lives or dies on.
Curiosity about why people give. You find donor psychology interesting. You have opinions about ask amounts, you notice when a charity email is well built, and you would rather test something than argue about it.
A taste for micro optimisation. Subject lines, send times, form layouts, the wording of a button. You enjoy the small stuff because you know it compounds. Formal experience is not required, appetite is.
Comfortable building your own numbers. Much of what you will want to measure does not exist here yet. You will be setting up your own simple trackers, working out what a decent baseline looks like, and being honest when a test is too small to tell you anything. You will not be handed a ready made dashboard.
A knack for appreciation. The card, the small gift, the get together, the moment that lands. You notice what would mean something to someone and you go and do it.
Comfort with asking. Directly, warmly, without apology, and happy to be told a number and then go and hit it.
Bringing people together. Community organising, events, volunteering, teaching, hospitality and customer support all count as experience here.
Driving. Supporter meet ups and gatherings mean some travel, sometimes outside cities. Applicants with a UK driving licence will be prioritised, although it is not essential.
Not required.
Fundraising qualifications
Previous charity or nonprofit experience
Formal experience of running A/B tests. If you have not done any of this before we will train you, and there is a personal development budget behind that.
What Sucess Looks Like
Monthly donor numbers growing month on month, and fewer of the ones we have leaving
Supporters who hear from a real person, and who can name someone at Animal Rising
Appreciation moments and gatherings that actually happen, month after month, rather than sitting on a plan
A running record of what you tested, what won, what lost, and what you changed as a result
Donation pages and appeals that convert better at the end of the year than they did at the start
A clear picture of what is working, written down where the rest of us can see it
What You Get To Build
This is a young programme, and that is the opportunity. Very little here is fixed, which means most of what exists in a year will be yours. If you want a role where you can point at something and say you made that, this is one.
Our CRM is not ideal, and you will be the one who will own the process for building a project to migrate us and identify alternatives. That is a genuine say over a system the whole organisation uses
Our processes aren’t fully built so you get to build the rest how you want rather than inherit someone else's
We don’t have standardised metrics for monitoring and reporting. You decide what good looks like here and set the first baselines against it
Our list is not yet big enough for every test to give a clean answer, so knowing which results to trust becomes part of your craft
There is no house style for how we thank and gather supporters. “You will write it”.
What You Get
Money you raise goes straight into work that keeps millions of animals a year out of the food system
Full ownership of a programme, and the chance to point at it in a year and say you built it
A team of people who are genuinely good company, in an organisation that punches far above its size
A real say in how we thank and gather our supporters
Freedom to test things without asking permission first
Regular one to ones with the fundraising lead, and written priorities reviewed monthly for the first three months, then quarterly
A budget for supporter appreciation and events
Comms available for editing, design and scheduling
Flexible working hour. Remote or from our Hackney office
A free book library, if there's something you want that we don't already have just ask
An organisation that is regularly in the news and regularly wins
We are neurodiversity affirming. Come as you are, come eager to help animals.
After your probationary period
£1,000 a year to spend on learning and personal development
If you need a laptop for the role, up to £400 towards one
If you need a work phone, up to £200 towards one
Application Process
How To Apply
If you are interested in this position, please email a CV and cover letter to recruitment@animalrising.org.
Apply early with something good enough. We would rather see that than something perfect three weeks from now.
Application Notes
Animal Rising is a nonviolent direct action organisation working to end factory farming and build a world where all animals are treated with care and compassion.