Communications Manager

Santander UK Foundation

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Communications Manager

Reports to: Executive Director, with reporting line subject to review as the team develops | Salary: £40,000 - £50,000 pro-rata & staff benefits | Location: Hybrid, with a regular London presence | Contract: Permanent, part-time, 3 days per week.

The Santander UK Foundation is a newly relaunched independent charitable foundation with a single, clear purpose: to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged 16-19-year-olds in Further Education. FE is the most neglected part of the education system - chronically underfunded, under-researched and largely invisible to those with the power to change it. We want to help change that.

We have three interconnected aims: to transform the lives of young people facing the most severe disadvantages in FE; to help the sector tell its story and create more change; and to be a best-in-class funder. Our funding will focus on three programme areas: attainment of gateway qualifications, enrichment, and transition into and out of FE - the points at which young people facing disadvantages are most likely to fall behind or fall through the gaps entirely. We will initially fund in England, focusing on general FE colleges where the concentration of disadvantage is greatest, with ambitions to grow our reach across the UK over the course of the strategy. We aim to fund long-term, without restriction wherever possible, across a mixture of direct service provision and systemic work. We will fund concentrated cohorts at any one time so we can invest deeply in learning and improvement alongside the organisations we support. We will put young people at the table when decisions are made.

This is a five-year strategy, running to 2030, and these roles sit at the heart of delivering it. We are a small, deliberately lean team in the early stages of building something we believe can genuinely change things. If you are excited by the prospect of joining at the beginning — shaping how the Foundation operates as much as what it does — and share our ambition for what a focused, well-run foundation can achieve in a neglected space, we want to hear from you.

The role

Storytelling is not a support function at this Foundation; it is central to how we achieve change. The FE sector has long struggled to make its case to the people with the power to fund and influence it. One of our most important contributions is to change that: helping to amplify the sector’s voice, amplifying the stories of the young people within it, and ensuring that the evidence we generate through our funding does not sit in reports but reaches the people who need to hear it.

This is a focused part-time role spanning communications, storytelling and brand - varied and substantive in equal measure. You will be the Foundation's primary storyteller, brand steward, and media presence, converting research findings, evaluation learnings, and the experiences of young people into compelling communications, whether through writing, film, events, or other media. The ability to make complex or unfamiliar material digestible, human, and impossible to ignore is at the heart of this role.

Working alongside Santander will be an important part of the role. The Foundation operates with its own identity and voice, focused on change for young people and the sector, deeply committed to a neglected part of the education system, while remaining part of the Santander brand. Navigating that with both confidence and care, ensuring the Foundation's communications enhance the brand’s reputation, and maintaining the trust and alignment that come with aspirations to be a best-in-class Foundation will require creativity and judgment in equal measure.

What you will do

• Build and own the Foundation's communications strategy - establishing the channels, tone, cadence and priorities that will define how the Foundation is seen and heard. Storytelling is at the heart of this: embedding a strong, consistent narrative across everything we produce is as important as how we distribute it. This requires forward planning, editorial judgment and the ability to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously. 
• Lead day-to-day external communications across the website, social channels, press, sector-facing content and core annual outputs such as funding calls and the annual report. The Foundation believes the most powerful route to change is through stories that make the invisible visible - that conviction should run through everything we put out. 
• Supporting the team to help grantees to build storytelling into their funded programmes from the start: commissioning and delivering case study films, written pieces, events and other outputs that bring the work to life for audiences beyond the standard report. 
• Supporting the team to convert research findings, evaluation outputs and sector intelligence into compelling communications - policy notes, opinion pieces, social content and presentations that shift how people think about FE and its young people. Work with the team to build streamlined content production and review processes that maintain high quality across everything the Foundation puts out. 
• Work alongside Santander's communications team to ensure the Foundation's stories land well within the bank and that brand, messaging and the timing of announcements are carefully managed. 
• Support the Foundation's events and convenings - from practitioner roundtables to showcases of grantee work, ensuring these moments are planned, well communicated and followed up effectively. 
• Elevate the voices of young people with lived experience of FE, ensuring they are active participants in shaping and delivering the Foundation's communications rather than simply subjects of them.

Who we are looking for

Someone who believes, genuinely, that the right story at the right moment can change things and who has the strategic instinct to build the conditions in which those stories can be told consistently and well.

You will have strong writing skills and a confident editorial judgment: you know what makes something worth reading, how to make complex things simple without making them shallow, and how to maintain a distinctive voice across very different formats and audiences.

You will have experience in marketing, communications, content or media, with a track record of building audiences, creating content that cuts through, and developing communications strategies rather than simply executing them. Experience of working within or alongside a corporate or institutional brand relationship is an advantage.

You will be comfortable working in a small, early-stage team where everyone's work connects to everyone else's, and where the communications function is being built from the ground up. You will understand that this role is not just about communicating what the Foundation does, but about being part of how it thinks about what it does and why.

You will have a genuine commitment to elevating the voices of young people, not as a communications device, but as a reflection of how the Foundation believes change happens. Experience of working with young people or communities as active participants in communications, rather than as subjects of it, would be particularly welcome.

A connection to FE, or to the young people the Foundation serves, would mean a great deal. But what matters most is a genuine belief that these young people and the sector deserve to be seen - and the skills and judgment to make sure they are.

Essential skills, qualities and experience

• Demonstrable experience in communications, content or media, with a track record of developing and delivering communications strategies rather than simply executing them.
• Exceptional writing skills and a confident editorial judgment, with the ability to produce compelling content across a range of formats and audiences, and to maintain a consistent, distinctive voice throughout.
• Proven ability to convert complex or technical material - including research findings and evaluation outputs - into accessible, engaging communications.
• Experience of building and managing external communications channels, including digital and social media, press and sector-facing content.
• Experience of working with or alongside a corporate or institutional brand, with the sensitivity and confidence to navigate that relationship effectively.
• A genuine commitment to elevating the voices of young people or communities as active participants in communications, not simply as subjects.
• Comfortable working in a small, early-stage team and able to operate both strategically and hands-on, and to build processes and ways of working as well as deliver output.

Desirable

• Experience in the charity, social policy, education or public sector.
• Familiarity with or connection to the Further Education sector and the young people within it.
• Experience of commissioning or producing multimedia content, including film, events or podcasts.
• Experience of working with charities to develop their communications and storytelling capacity.
• Experience of working with corporate foundations or in a context that involves managing a relationship with a founding organisation and brand partner.

Encouraging diversity

We recognise that job descriptions can read as a wish list rather than a genuine guide to what matters. Research consistently shows that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply for roles unless they believe they meet every listed requirement and in the right context. Additionally, an unfamiliar salary range can make an opportunity feel out of reach, even for someone who is exactly the right fit. Neither of those things should stop the right person from applying here. If you are excited about this role and share our values, we want to hear from you - even if your experience does not align perfectly with what we have described, or if this role represents a step up from where you are now. We recognise the value of transferable skills. We are more interested in who you are, what you believe and what you would bring to this work than in whether your CV matches every line of this job description. 

We are open to discussing flexible working arrangements and can provide reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

How to apply

Please see the full job description for full details on how to apply. xwzovoh We need an email application with the following: 

• Your CV
• A covering letter (max 2 pages) or video/audio (max 5minutes) telling us:
  • Why this role interests you
  • How your experience and skills relate to the Foundation and the strategy
  • What you would bring to the Foundation

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Key dates

• Application deadline: 10am, 20th May 
• First round interviews: 3rd June
• Second round interviews: 11th June