Portfolio Manager

Portfolio Manager

Terms:                Full-Time, Permanent, Immediate Start

Reports To:           Portfolio Lead

Salary Band:           Grade D (£34,507 to £37,958 per annum) plus London weighting of £3,285 per annum if applicable

Location:              Hybrid – linked to one of our offices in London, or Birmingham or based in NI, Scotland or Wales. We continue to seek to accommodate remote working

Who We Are

UnLtd is the leading provider of support to social entrepreneurs in the UK and offers the largest such network in the world. Our mission is to find social entrepreneurs with bold solutions to today’s challenges. Through funding and support, we help them to realise their potential and creating lasting change. 

UnLtd’s vision is a future where enterprising people are transforming our world for good. To enable this, we are committed to developing an eco-system of support to make it easier for those who need help to find it. 

UnLtd values diversity and is committed to inclusion and understanding intersectionality. These are more than just buzz words for us. They’re principles guiding how we build our teams, support leaders, empower social entrepreneurs and create an organisation that’s the right fit for every person. 

To support an inclusive environment where employees feel empowered to share their lived experiences and ideas, we have embedded an equity and inclusion group within UnLtd giving us a wide range of different perspectives in our work to help us see what is most needed in society. We are particularly keen to hear from those who identify as Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic, LGBTQIA, people who are disabled, those with learning differences, those with caring responsibilities, from a less advantaged socioeconomic background as well as any other under-represented group in our workforce. 

UnLtd welcome discussing and accommodating reasonable adjustments that can support an individual with disability related to physical, mental health or both. 

About the Role

We are a vibrant, ambitious, and complex organisation, keen to continuously learn and grow so that we can better support social entrepreneurs. In doing so, we want to better align our work around the needs of our Social Entrepreneurs to help them maximise their impact. 

As a Portfolio Manager, you will spend 20% of your time monitoring and managing the performance of the existing UnLtd investment portfolio and the remaining 80% spent delivering post-investment support and pipeline development activities for our latest fund, The Growth Impact Fund. This game-changing fund focuses on increasing access to investment for underrepresented founders, with lived experience, tackling inequality in the UK and was launched in 2022 in partnership with Big Issue Invest, UnLtd and Shift. 

Within the Growth Impact Fund, you will be responsible for working with the Portfolio and Investment team to deliver a grant funded programme for pre-and post-investment advisory support, helping ventures to get ready for the due diligence process and providing wrap-around support after an investment has been made. 

You will have the opportunity to learn from colleagues and consultants, building your knowledge of social entrepreneur support.  

Key Accountabilities

1. Provide support to a portfolio of ventures (UnLtd and Growth Impact Fund), helping them to create lasting and far-reaching impact.

• Work with a core group 10-12 ventures to offer 1 to 1 support that will accelerate their growth and impact. Currently, we are looking for someone with financial modelling experience on who can work with our ventures on managing their strategic financial plans and cashflows.  From engagement and diagnostic through to driving and facilitating support opportunities for each venture. 
• Lead an advisory-based approach to supporting the investment portfolio including identifying core ventures’ needs and then engaging with and coordinating pro-bono legal support, coaching and external consultants to meet those needs. 
• Work & learn from colleagues across the wider organisation to ensure we are offering a comprehensive support offer to these entrepreneurs leveraging all UnLtd’s support, networks, and connections. 
• Work closely with UnLtd’s finance team and Portfolio Lead to reconcile missed payments, adjust repayment schedules, and present loan restructures to the UnLtd Board. 

1. Managing, maintaining, and reporting on the performance of the portfolio

• Ensuring the collection of timely mid-year & annual financial, social, and key operational reporting from ventures. 
• Submitting quarterly and annual reporting to funders and participating in any funding audits for the UnLtd Fund. 
• Work with the portfolio management team, investment officer’s and Research and Communications colleagues to complete regular reporting for Growth Impact Fund’s investors. 
• Work with the Investment and Portfolio Lead to analyse profit & loss and balance sheet data biannually, flagging areas of concern in impact or financial performance and propose recommendations to rectify challenges. 
• Contributing to regular portfolio reports to the Investment Committee and the UnLtd Board on portfolio performance against financial, impact and operational targets.

1. Building a pipeline of ambitious entrepreneurs seeking social investment through the development of internal and external networks (Growth Impact Fund)

• Work with colleagues across the organisation to identify internal and external entrepreneurs seeking to scale operations and impact at national and local levels. 
• Work with funders and investors in this space to develop UnLtd’s pipeline of entrepreneurs, and our position as a key player in the UK social investment market. 
• Writing blog posts and attending and presenting at relevant events & workshops to increase UnLtd’s reputation as a social investor.
• Build and maintain key partnerships with organisations and people outside of UnLtd to benefit the portfolio of social entrepreneurs to access external capital and growth opportunities. 

1. Supporting ventures to access critical pre- and post-investment support through the Technical Assistance Facility

• Work on a programme of grant funded pre and post investment support, identifying relevant support areas and forging connections between ventures and consultants. 
• Developing close relationships with ventures to support them through the investment-readiness process, helping to explain social investment in a simple and inclusive way.
• Work with ventures to develop robust financial forecasts and implement financial management processes for investment, facilitating workshops and training modules on this subject for ventures. 

Job descriptions cannot be exhaustive. You may also be expected to support and deliver other projects and tasks, in line with your skills and experience that contribute to our overall organisation objectives beyond your core role. 

What exactly are we looking for? 

Often called ‘Essential Criteria’ 

• You have strong experience with financial modelling and cashflow analysis  
• You have financial awareness with experience of managing budgets 
• You have experience managing a diverse portfolio of clients 
• You have experience and track record of working with social businesses  
• You have an understanding of social investment and the needs of the social ventures when it comes to taking on and delivering against plans after investment 
• You can build strong relationships with a diverse range of individuals and organisations 
• You have understanding and experience of funding landscape and in advisory support to individuals and early-stage ventures 
• You have experience of social impact reporting 
• You have knowledge of the political, economic, and legal context that social entrepreneurs work in 
• You have good IT skills, especially MS Office and Excel, and can access and derive information 
• You can submit accurate work 

Personal attributes and values 

• You are mission driven and empathetic, with a powerful connection to our mission and values. 
• You are a strategic thinker and practitioner with a proactive, solutions-oriented approach. 
• You have real intellectual curiosity and a desire to understand based on rigorous evidence and collective wisdom. 
• You are results and impact-oriented with the highest standards in terms of delivery and performance, seeking to continuously improve and learn. 
• You are collaborative and a team player. 
• You always demonstrate personal integrity. 

UnLtd’s Values

At UnLtd we are looking for people who support our values below.

We are Brave

• We are ambitious about achieving social change
• We are bold in pursuing new ideas
• We are resilient in the face of adversity

We are Inclusive 

• We actively seek out great talent from everywhere
• We value diversity and welcome challenging points of view
• We foster an open and supportive environment

We are Accountable 

• We are transparent in our decisions and actions
• When things go wrong, we learn from it
• We hold ourselves to our purpose