Overview

Director of Fundraising and External Affairs – James’ Place. Supporting men in crisis, saving lives: James’ Place provides vital, life-saving therapy when it’s needed most. Join us as our new Director of Fundraising and External Affairs and help us transform support for men in suicidal crisis.

• Location: National – London (preferred), Birmingham, Liverpool or Newcastle, with regular travel to each centre (min 3 days p/w office based)
• Salary: c.£80,000, plus benefits and 15% London weighting, if applicable

James’ Place is a charity on a critical mission to save the lives of men in suicidal crisis. With centres located in London, Liverpool, Newcastle and further expansion plans across the UK, we are committed to offering men facing crises, such as relationship breakdowns, financial problems, or bereavement, brief, intensive therapeutic interventions. To date, we have treated over 3,000 men, providing proven clinical services that significantly reduce psychological distress. The Director of Fundraising and External Affairs is a new and vital role in the organisation and will form one of three new Executive Leadership Team posts. These new roles reflect the stage of development of the charity, which is now one of the leading providers of suicide prevention services in the UK. As the charity has evolved, its governance and senior management team are growing with it.

About the role

This pivotal new role will lead the Fundraising, Communications, and Advocacy functions, working closely with our CEO, ELT and Head of Fundraising to drive expansion and improvement and ensure the Charity’s long-term sustainability. For the first time, the role will bring together fundraising, communications, and advocacy under one directorate, developing strategies for growth and sustainability across all areas.

The Director of Fundraising and External Affairs will lead a dedicated, high-performing team of ten, ensuring that income generation is understood and prioritised across the organisation. We have so far raised £8m against an overall 4-year campaign target of £13m, primarily from high-value supporters, and a key priority will be ensuring this success continues beyond our appeal.

You will hold a highly strategic position, working closely with the CEO and other ELT members on overarching direction and personally developing relationships with some of our most valued supporters.

Who we are looking for

We seek a proven leader in fundraising with extensive experience of leading teams to deliver tangible results. Your experience will ideally lie primarily in fundraising, particularly across the high-value income streams, with demonstrable experience delivering growth strategies in these areas. You will bring a strong interest in communications and advocacy, recognising their critical role in building our profile and amplifying our impact. You will work closely with the CEO, senior team and the Fundraising, Communications and Advocacy team to develop an integrated external affairs strategy that ensures our brand, messaging, and policy influence are aligned with our organisational goals. You will have a proactive approach in collaborating with others, helping to build a cohesive external affairs function that strengthens our voice nationally and ensures that our life-saving work reaches all who need it in a sustainable way.

Your ability to think strategically, coupled with excellent communication skills, will be key to ensuring that the charity can continue to deliver high-quality services. As part of the core leadership team, you will also have the ability to deputise for the CEO when necessary.

This is a unique opportunity for a highly skilled and passionate leader to make a significant contribution to an organisation with an ambitious vision. If you are looking for a role where you can drive organisational growth while supporting an important mission, we encourage you to apply.

For further information about the role, or to arrange a confidential discussion, please contact our advising consultants at Peridot Partners:

If you would like to know more about this role please contact Emily Birch

Welcome from the Chief Executive Officer

Thank you so much for visiting this page to learn a little more about James’ Place and this important new role of Director of Fundraising and External Affairs. James’ Place is at a vital stage of its development, as we grow and expand to reach more men in suicidal crisis. This new role will be part of a newly established Executive Leadership team and is one of three we are currently recruiting.

Everything we do at James’ Place is driven by our mission to save the lives of men in suicidal crisis. We were established by bereaved parents who wanted to ensure that their tragedy would not be repeated. Since the first James’ Place opened in 2018, we have been able to work with over 3,000 men in acute suicidal crises, saving many lives.

We work with men because of the numbers: suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 35, and men are three times more likely than women to die by suicide. We treat people who have reached the point of crisis due to life events, such as relationship breakdown, financial problems and bereavement, for whom there is currently very little support available despite the urgency and risk of their situation.This is a huge gap and one we are dedicated to filling.

Our service is a rigorous clinical intervention based on academic models and independently evaluated by Liverpool John Moores University. However, our centres are warm and welcoming places, designed to make a man feel that he is somewhere safe, where he will be looked after, from his first point of contact. We are entirely charitably funded, and it is very important to us that we use our funds effectively and efficiently.

The work we do is hard: emotionally challenging, working with high levels of risk and urgency. However, it is also incredibly rewarding as we see men move from a place where they see suicide as the only answer to their problems to one where they can see a future ahead and go on to live their lives. There is nothing we like more than to hear back from men who have used our service and see how their lives have progressed.

We are achieving increased national recognition in the sector and were thrilled to win the Minister’s Award at this year’s Royal Society of Public Health awards. We are included in the Government’s Suicide Prevention Strategy as an example of good practice and were thrilled to be one of the Times and Sunday Times’ Christmas charities this year. We have extremely positive relations with local, regional and national policymakers and practitioners.

Now, we are at a point in our development where we need to go up a gear. In the North East, North West and London, a man in suicidal crisis who presents at A&E and who is assessed as needing urgent but not psychiatric care can be referred to James’ Place, where we commit to seeing him within two working days. He will be assessed by one of our senior clinical team and will start therapy with us straight away. We take referrals from across the NHS, charity, and community sectors, as well as from men themselves.

This is not the case in the rest of the UK, and we are committed to changing that. We will open a fourth centre in Birmingham in the next year, and a fifth centre shortly afterwards. At that point, we will conduct a strategic review to identify how best to ensure that everyone who needs the support of James’ Place can get it. This will involve building on our work with PwC, who supported us pro bono to look at the best geographic locations for our work, and also on our innovative pilots, which have included extending our service to young men and boys.

These three new roles are critical to achieving this and delivering on our mission. We are looking for people who share our vision and our commitment to driving change quickly but safely and sustainably. At James’ Place, we provide a service with a level of kindness and quality that we want our loved ones to experience. We are a highly effective, caring and dynamic team, and I am really excited about the prospect of bringing new strategic leadership into the organisation to support our growth.

In our new Director of Fundraising and External Affairs, we are looking for an exceptional professional who will lead an already high-performing team through a period which will include the end of our £13m Appeal, and into the next stage of our growth. We have built a track record of securing impressive, high-value gifts and also of working closely with our funders and supporters to grow a community of people who care passionately about our life-saving work. We have punched above our weight in terms of advocacy, and want to build that into this new directorate, bringing together fundraising, communications and advocacy into a force that will support our mission financially and in terms of outreach and wider awareness. We have achieved a lot, and there’s so much opportunity to do more.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I hope it has given you more of a sense of who we are, and that you are motivated to explore this role. I feel very lucky to work both with an excellent and committed team, and a supportive and highly effective board of Trustees, and am looking forward to expanding that team to include these new roles.

Please contact Peridot Partners, our recruitment partner, if you would like to discuss the role in greater depth. We do so appreciate your interest in us, and I very much look forward to meeting some of you at interview stage.

With best wishes,

About James’ Place

We are a charity offering free, life-saving treatment to suicidal men at our centres in Liverpool, London and Newcastle.

James’ Place was founded by Clare Milford Haven and Nick Wentworth-Stanley following the tragic death of their son James in 2006. Ten days after a minor operation, James took his own life. He sought help for his anxiety and suicidal thoughts but didn’t find the urgent help he so desperately needed. Clare and Nick were determined to prevent other families from losing loved ones and set up James’ Place to provide support for men in suicidal crisis whose needs are not met by existing services.

The first James’ Place opened in June 2018 in Liverpool, the first of its kind in the UK. Our second James’ Place centre opened in London in 2022. Our third centre in Newcastle opened in early 2024. We offer safe, friendly, non-clinical environments, where suicidal men are cared for and respected. We will open two new centres by the end of 2026. With five centres open, we will be able to treat up to 2,000 men per year.

We help men in suicidal crisis find hope for the future. Our professional therapists quickly get to the heart of a man’s suicidal crisis and help him solve it. Our treatment is proven to work, quick to access and delivered in a safe, friendly, non-clinical environment by trained, professional therapists.

What makes us different

• Treatment:Our treatment works. Men experience a clinically and statistically significant positive change following treatment and reduced levels of psychological distress.
• Time:We see men quickly with no waiting list.
• People:All our therapists are trained professionals. Men have the same therapist throughout their treatment.
• Place:We deliver treatment in our safe, friendly and non-clinical centres in Liverpool, London and Newcastle.
• Partners: We work alongside the NHS and other local support services, taking on clinical responsibility for the men we treat.

The heart of what we do is our clinical intervention. As we have grown, we have also done a lot of work this year reviewing our clinical governance, systems and policies. Our quality and safety of care are of utmost importance to us given the high risk of the men we work with and because we take on clinical responsibility for these men.

Our Values:

Focus Respect Bravery Professionalism Compassion Collaboration Hope

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Thank you for your interest in this role. Please download the Job Pack.

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For further information about the role, or to arrange a confidential discussion, please contact our advising consultants at Peridot Partners:

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Timetable

Closing date: 9 a.m. Tuesday 30th September 2025
Candidates informed of outcome: By 5 p.m. Friday 3rd October 2025
First stage interviews: Tuesday 7th October 2025 (In person, London)
Second stage interviews: Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th October 2025 (Online)

Peridot and James’ Place are committed to promoting equality and diversity. To help us raise awareness and support a culture that is diverse and recognises and develops the potential of all, we need to appreciate the profile of candidates who apply for positions. We will send you an equality monitoring survey at the point of receiving your application and at the time of placement. This ensures that our processes remain inclusive and equitable throughout, and provides us with important data to help us showcase our impact.

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