Charity Financial Administrator
We started as a movement of Leithers reclaiming common good land to make healthy food and nature accessible to ourselves and our children. For the first years of our existence, we were known as Leith Community Crops in Pots. Now we’re working to tackle a broken food system, climate change and social inequality locally, nationally and internationally.
Role
Salary
£21,000 per year FTE (28 hours per week pro-rata, full-time being counted as 36 hours), funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Initial contract is for one year. This may be extended, depending on the charity’s finances and the Financial Administrator’s performance.
Location
The job will partly be located in Earth in Common’s office and education space in Leith, Edinburgh (currently Annexe 2, Davidson House, 57 Queen Charlotte Street, EH6 7EY), especially during the initial induction/training period, but in the longer term much of the work may be done from home.
Background
The official purposes of Earth in Common (EiC), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SC044220), can be summarised as to encourage and support the people and organisations of Leith to grow food vegetables, and flowers for pollinating insects, in urban spaces, in order to improve health and wellbeing, community cohesion and the environment. However, EiC brings together a diverse group of enthusiastic staff, freelancers, volunteers and members/supporters who are tackling an array of social and environmental issues at local, national and international levels, and so it has broader activities and interests than suggested by its current purposes (which may be modified soon).
EiC runs Leith Community Croft (LCC), a community growing project with >100 members, on a corner of Leith Links public park, which it was appointed to manage (with and for the local community) by the City of Edinburgh Council. EiC has worked with local schools, establishing growing projects and engaging pupils and parents with issues concerning food and its production. EiC’s Croft Carbon College offers a wide range of environment-, wellbeing- and skills-related workshops and courses. Our highly popular Minecroft project offers outdoor adventure play/survival skills training for youngsters.
LCC is also the site of a tree nursery, a Hingabootery café, a “farmers’ market+” (Market on the Croft) and an old tennis pavilion building. We have obtained major funding to extend, remodel and refurbish this building and establish ancillary facilities to create a multipurpose community hub at the core of what we see as a pioneering and model ‘urban croft’, offering cross-cutting solutions to social and environmental problems with a suite of integrated projects, and we have obtained funding to help others replicate it and to set up an umbrella body for such projects.
To learn more about EiC, candidates are advised to familiarise themselves with the organisation’s history and current projects and campaigns by exploring this website.
Summary of the job
Reporting to the Nourishing Leith Project Officer (the charity’s current Acting Financial Administrator), who will induct the successful candidate and offer ongoing supervision, support and cover (as necessary), the Financial Administrator will be responsible for keeping accurate records of all the organisation’s financial transactions in order to keep the board informed of the organisation’s financial status and to provide sufficient information to the charity’s accountants for them to draw up the annual accounts (due by the end of May each year for the accounting year ending on 31 August of the preceding year). To do this, all the key information will need to be transferred to Xero (a cloud-based accounting application).
This work will entail the extensive use of Xero and online and offline Excel spreadsheets, and interacting with the organisation’s various bank accounts and financial service providers (which currently include two Triodos Bank accounts, Equals card accounts, PayPal, PaymentSense, Stok.ly, Stripe and Eventbrite) in order to keep track of multiple (and often inter-connected) projects, budget headings and funding and income streams. In addition, the Financial Administrator will be expected to support and guide staff and freelancers with regard to keeping and passing on records of their financial transactions and invoices, and to suggest and implement improvements and new protocols as appropriate. The Financial Administrator may also be required to pay invoices, salaries, etc., and to help with funding applications and general office and organisational administration.
Full training will be provided, so direct experience with all of the above is not essential. (Indeed, the current Acting Financial Administrator had to learn on the job.) However, the successful candidate will at least be familiar with Excel (or the equivalent) and the basics of bookkeeping, have some experience of accounting software and some experience of the charity or public sector. Most importantly, he/she/they will be highly numerate and organised, literate (English) and quick to learn, have great attention to detail and be professional, trustworthy and discreet, as much of the information handled will be confidential.
Application notes
A detailed job description and person specification is available online: tinyurl.com/finadminofficer. You can also request one by emailing evie@earth-in-common.org.
Please write a covering letter setting out how you meet the requirements of the position, and submit electronically, together with a CV and the details of two referees (preferably former/current employers, whom we shall approach with discretion), to evie@earth-in-common.org by noon BST on Wednesday, 30 June 2021. Applicants selected for interview will be notified by 5 p.m. BST on Monday, 5 July 2021. Interviews will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, 7 and 8 July 2021, and the successful candidate would ideally start the following Monday. NB Availability to start on this date will be a factor in selection, so let us know in your application if you can start then.
