Why to apply for our Head of Edinburgh Trust role
This summer it will have been ten years since the Edinburgh Trust provided its first grant, having been chosen by the City of Edinburgh Council in 2010 to become the guardians of a number of legacy funds that had been left to the city. Over this time the Edinburgh Trust team has made over 4,000 new grant awards to help people experiencing poverty in the city, as well as providing ongoing financial support to several hundred regular grant recipients.
Our original Edinburgh Trust funds now also include a local Response Fund, and in 2020 we launched a Covid fund to support people affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
I joined the team almost nine years ago, at a time when our grant making and charity looked quite different to how it does now. Over these years we’ve evolved our services and practices, in order to increase the accessibility and impact of our grant making in Edinburgh. We are always striving to refine and improve the application experience and are committed to developing our grants programme in collaboration with our referral partners and in co-production with lived experts.
Earlier this year we worked with an independent consultant to review how the Edinburgh Trust can increase its reach and our impact. The findings have given us an incredibly exciting opportunity to look at how we deliver grants in Edinburgh, and we’re currently working on plans to take the recommendations of the review forward. It is our ambition to ensure that we find ways to divest power in our grant making processes to Edinburgh’s communities, and that we continue to deliver our grants with dignity and equity.
We are also hugely inspired and energised by the recent work of the Edinburgh Poverty Commission and the calls to actions laid out in its Final Report. Our local vision for the Edinburgh Trust is that we are a trusted, collaborative partner to our friends and colleagues across the city in reaching the goal of eradicating poverty in Edinburgh in the next ten years.
As our new Head of the Edinburgh Trust, you would be joining at a time of great change, with scope to reshape our organisation’s future to best serve our communities. The need for our services has never been greater and so also will be the impact of new leadership. The investment that we are looking to make in expanding our work in Edinburgh is an example of our commitment to this mission. It is both timely and relevant that we step up our contribution towards making a difference to the people of Edinburgh.
We’re at a tipping point of great significance to the future of our work, and we’re hugely excited by our potential to support many more people facing financial in the city. If that resonates with you, this could be an excellent match and Edinburgh Trust would love to hear from you.