Strategic Planner (1499)

Do you want to create a better world for animals? At the RSPCA, we believe all animals deserve kindness and respect. We work for the benefit of every animal – as well as pets, that includes farmed animals, wildlife, and animals used in science. Choose a career with us and make a difference for every kind.

We're looking for a Strategic Planner to join our Engagement and Income Generation department, as part of our Strategic Support team, for a period of 16 months, to cover the parental leave of the substantive post holder. 

• Contract: 16 month fixed term contract 
• Working hours: 35 hours per week; Monday to Friday

Location: Hybrid Working- Home and travel to the London and Horsham Hubs as necessary.

We know it is a cliche but at the RSPCA, no two days are the same and within this role, you will find each day rewarding and challenging. This role sits within our Strategic Support team, who are a community of change-makers working hard to build an audience centric culture at the RSPCA: enabling the entire organisation to enhance customer engagement strategies that meet business objectives, and ultimately, improve the lives of animals.

Our Strategic Planner inputs into a centralised view of our customer engagement strategy across the society and translates this into our annual marcomms schedule, bringing together cross-divisional objectives with customer need to ensure that we are talking to our audiences clearly, compellingly and consistently - in the right way, at the right time, and across the right channels.

This role takes responsibility for carefully and collaboratively making decisions regarding our annual plan, ensuring that we have the right mix of messaging to attract, inspire and retain key customers. These decisions have a direct impact on income levels, brand awareness and behaviour change, so the success of this role is extremely important. 

Our Planner works in close collaboration with their Strategic Support peers in Research and Innovation, and nurtures respectful relationships with seniors across our directorates to understand how to leverage our audience touch points in order to act on engagement challenges and opportunities.

This is just a summary of what the role entails; for more information, please refer to the attached role profile. 

To be successful within this role, it is essential that the post holder is a highly collaborative individual, who is able to work with others to drive awareness of our work, inspire new and existing customers, reinforce relationships, retain supporters and enhance engagement across all customer-facing activity. This role requires someone who has a rare mix of both creative and strategic mindsets.

To be successful within this role, the post holder must have: 

• Experience of successfully managing stakeholder relationships and influencing across the organisation and externally up to senior management level.
• Significant marketing and comms analytical skills, an ability to spot customer opportunities and communicate them to various internal audiences.
• A good understanding of the different teams, responsibilities and resources that hold up an annual marketing plan, and how different decision-making variables, e.g. timing or prioritising can impact these areas. 
• Excellent storytelling skills, with the ability to bring people on a journey. 
• Facilitation experience, with the ability to devise and run workshops.
• Current experience in fundraising, communication, and engagement concepts/activity.
• An optimistic outlook.
• Experience in managing complex multi-channel communications schedules
• Experience using a wide range of content to enhance individual experiences.

If you have the skills and experience we are looking for, along with a passion for animal welfare, we would love to hear from you. 

Interviews will be held remotely on the 22nd of July.

We are really lucky that some of our roles attract a high level of interest and for this reason we review applications as they are received, unfortunately on some occasions this means roles may close earlier than advertised; so early submissions are highly recommended.  We are unable to accept applications past the close date.

We want to ensure we do all we can to give you a positive candidate experience through our recruitment. Whilst we do try to give feedback where we can, sometimes due to receiving high levels of applications, this may not always be possible

We recognise that a diverse and inclusive workforce is essential to achieving our core mission. For this reason we actively encourage a wide diversity of applications - in particular from members of minority ethnic groups, and people with disabilities - as these candidates are currently under-represented at the RSPCA.

Should you need any support with your application or interview process please contact resourcingteam@rspca.org.uk

Our mission is to ensure animals have a good life by rescuing and caring for those in need, by advocating on behalf of all animals and by inspiring everyone to treat them with compassion and respect