About the Role
The International Permaculture CoLab through Next Steps Project is seeking a collaborative and impact-driven Funding Strategist to join our team in 2025.
This is a freelance position paid by the hour using equitable wage calculation.
The team requires someone with a proven track record in securing funding for non-profit, cooperative, or permaculture-related initiatives. The strategist will formulate and help implement a funding strategy that aligns with our mission while working closely within a collaborative team.
The primary goal of the position is to secure funding to keep the CoLab functioning in 2026 and beyond.
Key Responsibilities:
- Develop a comprehensive funding strategy that supports the CoLab’s vision, goals and community funding profiles.
- Identify and pursue funding opportunities, including grants, partnerships, and other financial support. This includes grant writing, managing collaborative grant writing and processing feedback from applications.
- Work closely with the community to ensure alignment between funding opportunities and project needs.
- Contribute to the implementation of the strategy, providing guidance and practical support.
Essential Qualifications & Skills:
- Proven track record in securing funding and demonstrating measurable impact.
- Proven track record of designing successful funding strategies
- Experience in collaborative work environments and team-based strategy development.
- Strong understanding of nonprofit, cooperative, or regenerative economy funding models.
- Excellent research, writing, and communication skills.
- Ability to work within a capped budget while maximizing impact.
Desirable:
- Experience working with decentralised communities
- Experience using Leantime or other project management software
- Knowledge about CoLab projects
What We Offer:
- A dynamic and mission-driven team environment.
- Opportunity to shape and implement a funding strategy with tangible impact.
- Flexible, freelance work arrangement.
- Support from the Next Steps Project manager and the Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Lead
Timeframe, budget and remuneration
You will be working within the Permaculture CoLab, which operates using self-organising and sociocratic principles.
This freelance position will be part of a small team of other freelancers, that has a fixed budget of 11,200 GBP for this function. This budget needs to be exhausted by 9th December 2025.
Exact remuneration for each person will be determined once roles and responsibilities have been agreed by team members.Hourly rates are typically in the range of 25 – 30GBP and are usually calculated using an equitable wage guide. Higher rates may be possible depending on and reflecting the person’s experience in the field.
How to Apply:
In order to apply for this position you must join the CoLab as a member: https://www.perma.earth/onboarding-journey/ and attend an onboarding session. If there isn’t one available in the the first week of you joining please ask in the #welcome-gardening channel for an adhoc onboarding session.
Submit your application in the #next-steps-project channel on the CoLab Slack workspace in the recruitment thread for this position. In your application, you should outline your relevant experience, approach to collaboration, past funding successes and your proposed hourly rate. Submit your application by midnight UTC on the 28th March, 2025.
Following this, a recorded interview will conducted by volunteers from the community with recommendations to the community for a shortlist of candidate/s or make a proposal to extend the application deadline until the right candidate/s are found for this position.