To ask - does anyone in the charity sector have a permanent job anymore?

[WaryAmberPenguin]

I’m especially talking senior roles and beyond - it feels like everything is fixed-term, part-time or dependent on short-term funding. Is this just the nature of the sector now or are there actually stable, permanent opportunities out there for experienced people?

The sector is definitely struggling with uncertain funding and creating more fixed term positions to help manage cash flow, but it will depend on the charity - I’ve certainly seen permanent management level roles advertised, particularly for national and better-known charities who receive more government funding and greater public awareness ensuring more consistent donations.

What do you do? Do you have to remain in the charity sector? If you like the broader ethos of the third sector, social housing tends to be more stable due to more guaranteed income streams.

Permanent yes but part-time. In finance. One of the benefits of charites is that they tend to be much more flexible about part-time and hybrid working.

But yes it is a tough time for funding in the third sector. We are having to run multiple scenarios for forecasting with different levels of funding to work out how much service we can provide.

We do have full time employees but with the uncertainty in the sector no-one is moving on if they have a stable job so I guess fewer full time opportunities are coming up.

It was the norm when I worked in the charity sector for jobs to be funding dependent. As a result I worked on a variety of different projects and had to go through several redundancy consultations. I would imagine that's still commonplace.

NC for this- in the charity I work for we've used fixed term for ages and now those contracts are not being extended. Lots of positions that we need are being scrapped. If things continue like this we will cease to operate in our current form and I fear my permanent job will go too. I know through contacts that other charities are in a similar state with redundancies having occured, so there is nowhere to go. Worrying times for those who work in the sector.

I have a permanent contract and most of our c. 100 staff do. However most recent appointments are fixed term due to concerns about the economic climate and impact on fundraising. I am finding it harder to get new roles approved. The last fixed term role I recruited for I was inundated by overqualified candidates, many of whom were being made redundant. I recruited someone who’s very qualified for a relatively competitive salary.