Work with us! Twinning Programme Manager

We are recruiting for an exciting role within the RFT team.

Twinning Programme Manager

Part-time (0.6 FTE, 7.5 hrs/day, 22.5 hrs/wk), remote, UK-based
Fixed-term contract to 30th September 2027
Candidates must have the right to work in the UK.
Ideal start date: as soon as possible

About the Real Farming Trust

The Real Farming Trust (RFT) runs a number of programmes which bring people of all food and farming backgrounds and experiences together to advocate for a fairer food system based on agroecology. One of these programmes is Twinning, which falls under the umbrella of our food justice work. We are a small charity and value honesty, empathy, care and compassion in our interactions with each other in the organisation and with the partners we work with.

About Twinning

The aim of this programme is to use food as a vehicle for fostering connection and understanding between urban and rural communities.

The programme links four pairs of twins, each consisting of a community-run farm and an urban community organisation. The urban community organisations are a foodbank, two community organisations working with migrants and refugees and an organisation supporting people with learning difficulties.

The twins are all small organisations, doing important work with limited human resources. They are spread throughout the UK – Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Bristol/Stroud and the Swansea area.

RFT’s role is to: (1) support the twins and manage the administrative and financial tasks of the programme; and (2) to pull out learning to share across the twins and with other organisations and local and national policymakers working to promote understanding between communities that are geographically and culturally separated from each other.

The seven key objectives for the twins are:

• To build connections within the community across groups who normally wouldn’t otherwise cross paths or interact.
• To broaden the practice of each of the twinned partners through being both a teacher and a learner.
• To support people within each community to deliver activities on things that matter to them (eg, running cooking sessions that members ask for).
• To help people “find their voice” within their community (eg members are able to say what they want or share about their lives to visitors).
• To widen social and physical horizons for members of each community (eg so that people start to feel more confident in nature or more comfortable chatting to people from different situations).
• To experiment with ways of bridging divides and building better knowledge and understanding of what works.
• To share learning beyond the project with other social justice and agroecological organisations.

There is additional information here. The programme is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.

About the Role

The Real Farming Trust is looking for a Programme Manager to take over the day-to-day running of the Twinning programme, which is now entering its third year and will run to autumn 2027. The Twinning Programme Manager will take over from and report to the former Twinning Programme Manager. This role will focus on programme delivery until April 2027, and the final 6 months will focus on identifying and sharing out learnings from the programme. This role would suit someone experienced in grassroots community organising and programme management, who has excellent budget management skills.

RFT does not have an office and all staff work remotely from home. The successful candidate must therefore be a self-starter able to work alone with occasional remote supervision.

Essential criteria:

• Experience of paid or unpaid work with small grassroots, marginalised community groups
• Commitment to a bottom-up community development approach
• Experience of engaging and influencing other organisations (eg, through partnership work, events, communications or training)
• Excellent programme management skills, including demonstrable experience in managing budgets, collating and writing narrative and financial reports and running events,
• Ability and experience of communicating with diverse groups of people and ability to present publicly at webinars and face-to-face events
• Experience building relationships with and managing multi-partner programmes
• Experience of managing evaluation of multi-partner programmes and working with external evaluators
• Willing to travel regularly on overnight trips. The twins are spread throughout the UK, and visits are approximately once every 6 weeks, sometimes out of office hours
• Enthusiasm for building equitable communities and food systems

Desired criteria:

• Knowledge of the community food sector in the UK
• Communications skills (eg, posting on social media, creating event flyers, managing mailing lists, writing blog posts)
• Basic knowledge of community sector organisational policy and process best practice, including risk management, GDPR, safeguarding, health and safety
• Hold a clean driving licence
• Basic IT skills
• Proximity to Bristol/Stroud for occasional in-person meetings with RFT’s Social Change Programme Manager (ideal, but not required)
• Experience of new project development and fundraising for large community sector projects

Job Description:

Project and Budget Management

• Support the twins to plan new activities and help them put together budgets and think through the requirements for an event
• Maintain excellent financial records and balance budgets
• Collate financial and narrative data from the twins and prepare regular financial and narrative reports for the programme funder, RFT board and other stakeholders on the work of the partners and the programme as a whole
• Manage, monitor and report on the programme’s outcomes and evaluate the programme’s progress against its goals and objectives

Evaluation and Reporting

• Meet online with the programme evaluator to plan, assess and analyse the data collected
• Plan and organise for the collection of additional data which provides additional learning about the impact or delivery of Twinning

Outreach and Learning

• Identify and engage organisations and individuals who are interested in the learnings from the programme
• Build relationship and understanding with the twins through regular conversations with the programme leads
• Attend conferences and organise webinars to share learning from the programme
• Support the Twins and their participants to share learning to their networks and other organisations (eg by making participant voice videos)
• Manage meetings between different sets of twins to share learning across the programme, and facilitating learning and sharing between the twins
• Visit a twin to attend an activity or event

What else you need to know:

• We do not have an office. You will need to provide your own workspace and laptop; however, an equipment subsidy is available to support with home working expenses (upon successful completion of the probationary period).
• We all work remotely from home and meet twice a year in-person for a few days each time. All staff are expected to attend.
• We all work flexibly, but you will be expected to do the majority of your work weekdays between 8am and 6pm. Some evening and weekend work may be required to join Twinning events.
• This role is a fixed-term contract through to the end of September 2027.

The benefits you will get:

• • Salary: £35,485 – £37,474 (pro rata at 0.6 FTE)
  • 20 days annual leave, plus Bank Holidays, pro rata increasing by 2 days for every year of completed service up to a maximum of 25 days (33 including bank holidays)
  • Flexible working to suit your other commitments during the week
  • Employer matched pension of 4%

How to apply

Please email your CV and a covering letter (no more than 1 page) detailing evidence (eg, examples of experience, qualifications) that you meet the criteria listed and why you would like to join our team to Brittany Oakes at brittany@realfarming.org by 12pm GMT (midday) on Wednesday, 29th October 2025.

If you have questions about the role, please contact Jade Bashford at jade@realfarming.org.

What will happen after you have sent in your application

• We will let all applicants know if they have been shortlisted for an interview by the end of Thursday, 6th November 2025.
• Interviews will take place online on Tuesday 11th and the morning of Wednesday 12th November 2025. If these dates or timings are difficult for you, please tell us in your application.
• We will share a summary of the interview questions in advance with you. The aim of the interview is to help you show us how you would do the role, not to catch you out.
• We will let you know in advance who will be on the interview panel and their role within the RFT.

Equity and Anti-Oppression

We are committed to becoming a more inclusive workplace with a diverse staff body. We believe this is essential to our effectiveness as an organisation and our ability to fulfil our mission of “good food for everyone, forever”. We need to address both inequity and oppression within our work if we are to meet our aim. There will be tensions that this work creates and difficult questions that we need to address both internally and externally.

We know that people with certain backgrounds and characteristics are underrepresented in our team and in the alternative food and farming movement, and we want to address this. We are committed to working proactively to dismantle these systems of oppression and ensure equal opportunities for everyone, regardless of their background.

We have started to do this work internally, but we know there is much more to do. Every member of RFT staff is involved and part of this work. We have an internal Equity and Anti-Oppression Group that leads and monitors this work and reports to the Board.

Equality and Diversity Monitoring Form

The Real Farming Trust is committed to promoting equality and diversity in line with the Equality Act 2010, providing an inclusive and co-operative environment in which all individuals feel respected. Filling in this equality and diversity monitoring form is voluntary. The information you provide will be kept confidential and will only be used for monitoring purposes. Please don’t enter any information that would identify you. This form is kept separately from your application and will not be seen by interviewers.

Please note that due to the volume of applications we usually receive, we regret that we are unable to offer feedback to individual applicants.

Thank you for your interest in the Real Farming Trust. The Twinning Project is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.