Senior Operations Manager (sports charity)
Take total ownership of program delivery at a well-funded, fast-growing sports charity.
We are reviewing applications on a rolling basis and may close early – please apply immediately.
Is this for you?
This role is not for everyone. If you want independence, ownership and responsibility for delivering a charity’s programme, read on.
We have a tiny team, move fast and work very independently. Working here can feel like working at a startup in all the best and worst ways.
You’ll need entrepreneurial spirit and you’ll be given a lot of space to succeed.
Level Water helps children with disabilities learn to swim.
What would success look like?
– 10x our programme (take us from helping 500 to 5,000 children per week)
– Tear up and rebuild our operating model (find us 10x the capacity in every pool)
– Take us from teaching children with physical disabilities to children with all disabilities
– Double the percentage of children who learn to swim
– Take us from just “Learn to Swim” to “Joyful experiences in the water”
What’s Level Water like?
Level Water is a small charity with big ambitions.
We provide one-to-one swimming lessons for children with disabilities. But it’s more than just learning to swim; it’s about joy and passion for swimming, collecting experiences around the water that lead to a lifetime of swimming.
Our team has always worked independently and mostly remotely. Even before Covid we had no fixed place, days, or hours of work. We manage by outcomes rather than hours.
What’s the Senior Ops Manager role?
Your success will be measured by the number of children we help, and the quality of experience that we deliver them.
The number that matters most to you is how many children successfully learn to swim each year.
Before Covid we were teaching 500 children a week, at 90 pools and working with 300 teachers.
But we have 2,000 children on our waiting lists, and know that there are tens of thousands who need our help.
You will have administrative support to do much of the day-to-day communication with families and pools, freeing you up to focus on strategy, improvement and relationships.
We are well-funded, so it’s unlikely that money will slow you down.
What skills do you need?
The biggest single skill you need here is to be a self-starter who can make new things happen under your own initiative. We’re looking for someone who has a proven track record of designing (or redesigning) something, building, testing, and making it happen at scale.
With support from our CEO you will design your own workload, choose what to go for and be responsible for your own results. You will likely travel a few days per month with the occasional overnight stay.
To increase the quality and quantity of our lessons, you will need to:
– Be crazy-organised (manage relationships with 1,000 people, and be productive when working alone)
– Be persuasive. Tell stories, sell a vision of the future, hold people to account
– Lead on strategy and planning as well as overseeing day-to-day process and execution
– Be positive, and generate enthusiasm in others
– Be sensitive, including conversations about disabilities and telling people that we can’t help them
– Teach yourself how to do something new, fast (Product Management …Rapid prototyping … Employee engagement … Monitoring and Evaluation … Database design … Training design … Account management …)
– Pick up the phone (don’t hide behind email)
This is a great role for the right person, where you can really unleash your potential and take us to a new level. We run a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) which means that you have no fixed hours of work – just do a great job in a way that works for you.
Compensation details
Salary range
£35-40k basic, plus performance-related bonus.
For the right person, we will make this work.
You will have targets and a bonus
We will agree a balanced scorecard of targets for the year, and a strong steer on what you’ll need to do to get there. There will be a good bonus linked to that.
We’ve always had a flexible working arrangement
Our whole team works remotely.
It is our preference that you can get to Tunbridge Wells one day a week (and more during the first month).
We don’t work 9-5 and you don’t need to either.
We will agree the outcomes that you’ll deliver each month.
It’s up to you how, where and when to achieve them.
£35000 – £40000
90% Remote – UK based – CEO in Tunbridge Wells
Full Time
Mid-Senior
Applications close: At anytime
To apply
Please apply with a CV and a single page of A4 answering this question:
“Tell me about a project where you’ve designed something from scratch, or completely re-designed something”.
PS … font size 11, normal page boundaries … winners never cheat and cheaters never win!