Programme Director - Communities

Programme Director – Communities 
Contract type: Fixed term contract (12 months, with the potential to extend to 18 months)  
Full time: 34.5 hours, we are open to a conversation about how you work these hours 
Location: Hybrid between home and our London office – at least once a month in the office, alongside travel for conferences, meetings and events with UK-wide teams and stakeholders. We welcome applications from candidates based anywhere in the UK. 
Salary range: £100,000 - £108,000

Are you an experienced programme leader with deep credibility in the community sector? Do you excel at building partnerships, leading complex grant and capacity‑strengthening programmes, and working alongside communities to drive systemic change?  

We’re looking for an exceptional Programme Director – Communities to help spark a revolution in cancer care for the future across the UK.

About us 

At Macmillan you'll find talented people working together to do whatever it takes to support people living with cancer. We're going all out to find even better ways to help even more people who need our support. Our values are at the heart of who we are and everything we do, inspiring our thinking and guiding our actions. 

Our new organisational strategy sets out how we’ll fight even harder to make every pound raised count for even more. With your help, we’ll transform cancer care for good.

About the role 

You will lead a cross‑organisational programme to evolve and expand Macmillan’s offer to community organisations.  This will include a multi-year grant‑giving and capacity strengthening programme investing over £10m in communities, enabling long‑term partnership building and participation in systems change. You will embed equity, community voice, leadership and co‑design into Macmillan’s work, ensuring that our services, investments and strategic priorities are shaped with communities, not for them. 

You will build organisational capability around community engagement, participation and equitable partnership working, collaborating closely with other transformation programmes to ensure insights from communities directly influence design, governance and decision‑making. You will also act as a senior external spokesperson, forging relationships with community leaders, funders, policymakers and multi‑sector partners. 

This is a highly collaborative role requiring strong programme leadership, expertise in community partnership, and the ability to influence change in a large, complex organisation. It’s also an exciting opportunity to shape a relatively new team, helping create a culture of empowerment, learning and shared purpose.

Key responsibilities: 

• Lead a cross‑organisational programme and matrix team to deliver and expand Macmillan’s grants and capacity‑strengthening offer to community organisations. 
• Embed community engagement, empowerment and co‑design into Macmillan’s systems transformation work. 
• Build the insight, partnerships and participation needed to reach everyone and support marginalised communities. 
• Develop and deliver a strategy to embed participation and co‑design mechanisms and capabilities across Macmillan, working closely with Culture & Inclusion colleagues . 
• Develop governance to prioritise participation resource across services, systems change, impact investment and public engagement. 
• Collaborate with teams across Macmillan, including Volunteering and Communications, to develop shared approaches for engaging supporters, volunteers and people living with cancer. 
• Develop sector-leading evidence, impact measures and insight that demonstrate the value and outcomes of our partnerships with communities. 
• Lead stewardship and partnership with community leaders and networks, strengthening their capacity and rebalancing power. 
• Redesign internal systems and processes — particularly grant‑making — to better meet the needs of community organisations. 
• Balance near‑term programmatic delivery with building a long‑term vision for Macmillan’s community partnerships. 
• Act as a senior external spokesperson and representative with system leaders, policymakers and community partners. 
• Develop and contribute to cross‑sector learning, thought leadership and collaborative forums. 
• Provide strategic briefings and insight to the Executive Team, Board and wider organisation. 
• Deliver inclusive, supportive leadership to the Communities & Participation team and matrix colleagues. 

 
About you 

You will succeed in this role if you are a strategic, values‑driven leader who combines programme excellence with authentic community credibility. You’ll thrive if you are a relentless champion of equity, able to build trust with grassroots organisations, navigate complexity with confidence, and influence senior leaders to embed participation and equity into how Macmillan works.  

You will bring: 

• Deep understanding of the UK community and voluntary sector, and experience building sustainable, strategic community partnerships. 
• Significant experience leading major programmes and partnerships in complex organisations. 
• A track record of embedding methodologies to co-design products, services and offers with communities to better meet their needs. 
• Strong programme and matrix leadership skills, aligning multi‑disciplinary teams behind shared outcomes. 
• Experience embedding equity, participation, insight and data literacy into organisational ways of working. 
• Strong people management and leadership skills, with a focus on inclusion and performance. 
• Experience managing significant budgets and major commissioning or grant-making programmes. 
• Ability to build influential relationships across sectors — particularly communities, voluntary sector partners and public service leaders. 
• Credibility to engage meaningfully with community organisations and to shift thinking internally. 

In return, we offer a range of benefits including: 

• 25 days holiday plus flexible bank holiday options, increasing by 1 day every year of service up to 30 days  
• Pension matched up to 7.5% 
• 120+ learning and development offers, with access to external professional qualifications 
• Flexible working patterns, such as compressed hours, flexibility to work earlier or later around our core working hours of 10am-4pm 
• Holiday buying and selling scheme, life insurance, free wills, retail discounts and much more 

 
Recruitment process 
 
Application deadline: 23:59 on Sunday 12th April 
1st stage interview dates: Online interviews will be held on the week commencing 27th April 
2nd stage interview dates: Interviews will be held in person at our London office on the week commencing 4th May 

To ensure fairness and consistency to select the best candidate for this role, all our applications are anonymised up until an interview has been confirmed. 

So we can support you to be at your best during the application or interview process, please contact Macmillan TA Team TATeam@macmillan.org.uk for advice and reasonable adjustments.  

We welcome applications from everyone who meet the criteria and strongly encourage individuals to apply who have a disability, impairment or health condition or individuals who identify as Black, Asian or from another minority ethnic background, as these groups are currently under-represented at Macmillan. Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy here along with our internal employee representation body, ‘Our Voice’ and 8 Employee Network groups help us promote fairness and belonging, becoming an engaged and inclusive organisation for all our people.