Philanthropy Manager (Trusts & Major Donors)

Detention Action is a growing organisation working to challenge immigration detention, unjust deportations, and other areas of the Hostile Environment in the UK. 

We provide emotional and practical support to people detained in detention centres and prisons through in-person visitors and a casework service which is accessible through a freephone helpline. We also provide holistic and accessible advice and support on-site at detention centres and prisons by holding regular advice workshops.

We campaign for reform to immigration detention policy and practice, drawing on evidence obtained from our frontline work, and we also train and support people with experience of detention to campaign and lobby for change. We currently facilitate two lived experience campaigning networks – Families for Justice (FFJ) and Allies for Justice (AFJ).

We campaigned for an end to the Detained Fast Track asylum process, successfully bringing a strategic legal challenge which led to the suspension of the process in 2015 and we continue to campaign against its re-introduction.  In 2020, we brought several prominent legal challenges, preventing the removal of those due to be deported on a charter flight to Jamaica in February, and pressurised the Government into releasing the majority of people detained during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, we have continued to campaign and take action to challenge the Hostile Environment and are currently involved in a strategic legal challenge around the Government's plans to send people seeking asylum to Rwanda.

We are looking for a Philanthropy Manager (Trusts & Major Donors) to join our team.

Focusing in the first instance on our trust fundraising and major donor programmes, our successful candidate will embed a range of newly-created financial and management procedures to ensure the smooth running of internal fundraising operations, as well as developing our case for support. They will effectively steward existing donors and develop opportunities for new funding relationships, and will work with senior staff to develop and implement a new fundraising strategy.

Detention Action has grown significantly as an organisation in recent years, and we are looking to build on relationships with existing funders who have awarded us multi-year grants, as well as to identify new trust funders and major donors to secure further funding to enable us to meet the rising need for our work.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced and passionate individual who is looking to make their mark, to join us in defending the rights of people in detention at a critical time for our organisation and the wider immigration and human rights sector.