Monitoring and Evaluation Lead

London, England, United Kingdom

5/7/2025

Summary

The Vision and Strategy Team at the National Church Institutions are looking to hire a Monitoring and Evaluation Lead to join their fast growing team. The purpose of this role is to oversee the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of the SMMI grant-making programme to support the delivery of the Church of England's Vision and Strategy. Working with dioceses, external partner organisations and colleagues across the Vision and Strategy team, the postholder will build capacity around implementing M&E good practice for funded programmes and beyond, to ensure effective programme design, monitoring of performance, gathering of information and supporting the release of lessons learned to catalyse wider change within the Church.

The postholder will set M&E policies and direction working closely with their line manager (Head of Grants). They will manage one line report (Monitoring and Evaluation Operations Manager) that will be responsible for ensuring evaluations are effectively undertaken by external evaluators and delivering a limited set of evaluations and mid-term reviews.

The role is critical in providing trustees full confidence in the use of funding and its impact through monitoring and evaluation. This is a strategically important role, as it directly consolidates emerging learning to further support the Church's Vision and Strategy.

About the Department/Role

The Vision and Strategy Team has been established to support the whole Church in its embrace of and engagement with the national Vision and Strategy for the Church for the 2020s, and to support the implementation of the Emerging Church programme. The Vision and Strategy has three strategic priorities: to be a church of missionary disciples, to be younger and more diverse, and to develop a mixed ecology - doing church in varied forms and settings.

The Vision and Strategy team consults on and the Funding and Learning sub-team manages one of the largest grant-making programmes in the country, with £100m + of Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI) disbursed annually to support the Church's mission and ministry across England, prioritising investment in the most deprived communities. The SMMI funding includes the Diocesan Investment Programme (DIP) which provides funding for dioceses to enable the bold outcomes and strategic priorities of the Vision & Strategy to become a reality in parishes and communities through programme funding, and smaller Capacity grants. The SMMI funding also includes the People and Partnerships Funding, awarded to partners and networks to help overcome national challenges, by scaling up successful work or innovating, to better support the local church in delivering the Vision & Strategy bold outcomes, and the Lowest Income Communities Funding to sustain and strengthen the Church's mission with low income and deprived communities.

What you'll be doing

• Responsible for the overall approach to M&E to both support the impact and assessment of SMMI funded projects and programmes.
• Develop the pool of evaluators used for baselining and evaluations, owning relationships and ensuring new contractors have synergy and sympathy with the Church of England's ways of working.
• Forward plan overall M&E work and oversee reviews of specific streams of funding and ensure the effective gathering of independent feedback from grantees.
• Work closely with the Head of Grants to make sense of the evaluations emerging in terms of overall Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning strategy and cost-effective use of budget

Your job description is intended to reflect your main tasks and areas of work but is not exhaustive. Changes may occur over time, and you will be expected to agree any reasonable changes to your job description that are commensurate with your banding and in line with the general nature of your post. You will be consulted about any changes to your job description before these are implemented.

About You

The Church of England is for everyone and we want to reflect the diversity of the community the Church serves across the whole country. Therefore, while of course we welcome all applications from interested and suitably experienced people, we would particularly welcome applicants from UK Minoritised Ethnicities (UKME)/Global Majority Heritage (GMH) and other under-represented groups. As a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to recruiting disabled people. We offer interviews to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria for the role.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information about the role and person specification.

Please note: Closing date is Sunday 8th June 2025, and interviews will be held on Thursday 19th June, 2025

What we offer

Your Salary

• A salary of £59,248 per annum, plus age-related pension contributions between 8-15% of salary. We will also match any pension contributions you make up to an additional 3% of your salary.

Your Benefits

• 25 days annual leave (increasing to 30 days within 5 years) plus eight bank holidays and three additional days (pro-rated if working part-time).
• We welcome all flexible working arrangement requests. This is looked at in a case-by-case scenario and if this fits within the department's needs. We try to be as flexible as we can in your work pattern to support you with other commitments, and to give a good work-life balance.
• We offer many services and initiatives under our Family Friendly Programme, some of these include enhanced Maternity Leave initiative, Adoption Leave, Paternity Leave, & Shared Parental Leave. Structured induction programme and access to a range of development opportunities including apprenticeships.

• Automatic enrolment and access to Medicash (one of the UK's leading health cash plan providers), providing you with many services including reimbursements of routine dental treatment, optical, specialist consultations, and therapy treatments. Unlimited access to virtual GP & Private prescription service and health & Stress related helplines.

• Access to Occupational Health, and an Employee Assistance Programme
• Access to the Department of Education Restaurant and Westminster Abbey with a plus-one guest.
• Apply for eligibility for an Eyecare voucher.
• Opportunity to join the Civil Service Sports & Social Club, and get involved in a range of staff networks, groups and societies.

Desired Skills and Experience

Monitoring and Evaluation team plan
* Responsible for the overall approach to M&E to both support the impact and assessment
of SMMI funded projects and programmes.
* Develop the pool of evaluators used for baselining and evaluations, owning relationships
and ensuring new contractors have synergy and sympathy with the Church of England's
ways of working.
* Forward plan overall M&E work and oversee reviews of specific streams of funding and
ensure the effective gathering of independent feedback from grantees.
* Work closely with the Head of Grants to make sense of the evaluations emerging in terms
of overall Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning strategy and cost-effective use of budget.
Monitoring & Evaluation of the SMMI funding programme (working with the Diocesan
Support Team, Churches and Networks Team, and Lead Strategy and Impact Analyst)
* Support programme design, through advising partners and dioceses on their theories of
change and MEL plans for new funding proposals, ensuring dioceses and partners
understand data collection approaches.
* Work with specific dioceses to agree an assurance framework which provides
accountability on governance and outcomes for large awards.
* Lead on development of the SMMI shared outcome framework, with the Lead Strategy
and Impact Analyst, and advise grantees on alignment with its policies.
* Advise on effective and efficient processes for conducting and assessing annual reviews
to support adaptive programming, carried out by Vision and Strategy consultants or
outsourced as agreed.
* Support the management of M&E data and reporting within the new Salesforce Grant
Management Platform, Amp Impact.
* Support the gathering and dissemination of material, in line with the overall MEL strategy.
Learning and building an evaluative culture (working closely with the Insights and
Engagement team)
* Synthesise and share learning from end of project evaluations evidencing the impact and
lessons learnt from funding for the SMMI Board, and wider stakeholders.
* As demand arises from evaluations or thematic interest, provide support to learning
communities led by the Insights and Engagement team.
* Support the dissemination of evaluations and material evidencing the learning of funding
through the Church Support Hub.
* Support a culture of learning and evaluative thinking in dioceses and partners, including
learning plans.
* Provide technical support on monitoring of the CofE Vision and Strategy and other
national Church funding as time allows.
Funding Strategy and Governance support
* Hold responsibility for the implementation of specific grants as allocated by the Head of
Grants.
* Support the governance arrangements for the national Church funding, by preparing
papers for the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board and inputting to papers
for other governance bodies.