Investment Manager

Careers4Change is delighted to support Vivensa Foundation in their search for an Investment Manager

Job Title: Investment Manager

Location: London with hybrid office and home-working arrangements

Reporting To: Chief Investment Officer

Contract: Up to 12 month FTC (starting in October 2025)

Date Closes: Fri 12 Sep 2025

Role Purpose

The Vivensa Foundation are seeking to recruit an Investment Manager on a one year fixed-term basis, to support the organisation in deploying and managing its social investment portfolio. (There may be an opportunity for the role to progress to a permanent position, depending on available funding and personal performance).

It's an exciting time to be joining our organisation. We're looking for people with the commitment, vision and expertise to work with our small but highly experienced and professional executive team, allowing us to support innovative approaches that can help deliver our mission of ageing well.

In the spring of 2025, theVivensa Foundation launched its new strategic framework and identity . Formerly known as theDunhill Medical Trust , it was back in the 1980s that our founder's niece recognised that the shifting demographics would drive a need for investment in a high-quality research base to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of ageing and ageing-related disease, together with the delivery of innovation to improve health and social care services for older people.

Our charitable objects were never more relevant than they are today and the opportunities are immense to support our academic and clinical researcher community to make real systemic change. The Foundation plans to play its part in three broad ways:

• investing in ideas
• connecting research and practice and
• fostering flourishing communities.

With our new identity and with our refreshedStrategic Framework and priorities for the next five years in place, we are now looking forward to writing our next chapter. As an independently endowed charitable foundation, with an endowment now valued at c. £170M, we are keen to leverage all the resources at our disposal in pursuit of our mission - not just the funding we distribute annually in grants. That has led us on a journey of reviewing how our money is invested, resulting in the Foundation making a commitment to allocate £5m of its investable assets, for the purpose of making social investments. TheSocial Financing Policy outlines the Foundation's ambition to invest £5M, to support a variety of ideas that align to the organisation's mission of ageing well. A range of financial mechanisms may be deployed, such as repayable grants, low interest loans, outcomes-based contracts or equity investments - providing capital both directly to purpose-driven organisations (such as charities or social enterprises), or indirectly through investment into pooled funds whose underlying investments are in companies which are substantially supportive of our mission.

We've made a handful of investments to date - from a commitment to a science-for-impact venture capital fund -Zinc , to a direct equity investment in a homecare business,BelleVie . But with the volume of investments under consideration likely to increase over the coming years, we are looking to put in place the internal resource and processes to support the Foundation's social investment ambitions, leading to the creation of this role.

Key Responsibilities

The Investment Manager role will support the Foundation's social investment activity, providing additional capacity and resource, working closely with the Chief Investment Officer and Social Financing Committee, across the following areas:

Investment sourcing and due diligence:

• Develop a pipeline of suitable social investment opportunities
• Assess pipeline opportunities to identify relevant and mission-aligned investment propositions
• Support potential investees through the investment appraisal process, providing financial advice and business support
• Analyse financial, operational and impact aspects of investment proposals, summarising assessments into investment memos
• Support with execution of approved investments, including drafting and negotiating legal agreements, with support from external legal counsel
• Develop appropriate reports and tools to support with the management of the existing portfolio investments
• Monitor both the financial and non-financial (social impact) performance of investments, identifying suitable metrics to measure and report on an on-going basis
• Build effective partnerships with investees, providing support and advice, leveraging the expertise of the Committee and wider organisation, where relevant

Reporting and governance:

• Prepare investment recommendations, due-diligence reports and related materials for the Social Financing Committee
• Facilitate the Social Financing Committee investment decision-making processes, with support from the Chair and CIO
• Design suitable management reports to support Board and Committee oversight
• Support the learning and development of others, including sharing advice and knowledge with team colleagues and with fellow charitable foundations
• Collaborate with other investors including participating in relevant social investor forums and attending impact investing events.

Person Specification

Prospective candidates should be able to demonstrate the required attributes and essential skills, with a preference for those who can evidence some of the desirable experience.

Attributes

• Embodies the Foundation's values with an interest in supporting the organisation's mission and vision.
• Structured thinker who can deal with complexity and distil complex information.
• Self-starter who can work independently under their own initiative and proactively seek support when required.
• Collegial collaborator, comfortable with the flexibility required in a small organisation, to contribute across a wide range of tasks.
• Passion for improving the health and wellbeing of older people.

Essential skills and experience

• Understanding of context in which modern charitable foundations work, particularly in relation to investment guidance provided by the Charity Commission.
• Strong financial analytical skills, with an ability to assess financial statements, stress-test financial models and evaluate financial performance.
• Experience in conducting due-diligence processes and preparing investment recommendations.
• Understanding of social impact and systems-thinking, with the ability to recognise theory of change models and evaluate planned outcomes - both financial and social.

Desirable skills and experience

• Knowledge of financial products and structures, such as repayable grants, low interest loans, outcomes-based contracts or equity investments.
• Experience of investing directly in small-scale social or community enterprises with an understanding of the legal and tax implications.
• Experience of running a small team or social enterprise, particularly within the clinical, medical and/or health and wellbeing sectors.
• Knowledge of delivering innovation in healthcare, social care or academic and clinical research settings.
• Completion of a relevant professional financial qualification such as ACCA/ACA or CFA, for example.

Vivensa Foundation: We like to invest in those who have great ideas and methods for improving the health and well-being of older people and in making the connections which can help them to flourish. We do this through both grant-making and social investment and through convening networks of support like the Vivensa Academy and the UK Ageing Research Funders' Forum and supporting UK AgeNet. You can find our Strategic Framework here, along with details of our people (staff, committee members and trustees), our policies and governance structure and our history.