[New post] Volunteer vacancy – Cambridgeshire Historic Churches Trust – Honorary Grants Secretary

The Trust offers grants and interest-free loans for repairs and improvements to places of worship across the County of Cambridgeshire. Our main source of income is the sponsored “Ride, Drive and Stride” visiting churches on the second Saturday of September each year,.

The Trust is non-denominational, but the majority of applications are from Church of England churches. The Trustees delegate decisions on grants and loans to an Executive Committee. Please see our website www.camhct.uk

We need someone with administrative experience to take on this important role. You will be in sympathy with the ambitions of applicants and the problems they face, and may have some experience of project work or applying for grants yourself.

Responsibilities include:-

Maintain a record of initial enquiries regarding grants. These may translate to only one or two formal applications each month, max 30 per annum. Correspondence may be by post or - increasingly - by email.

Prepare a summary Report for presenting to the Executive Committee’s 6 meetings. Meetings are held every other month, usually in Ely.

Advise applicants of Committee decisions in writing using the existing pro-forma documents (currently in MS Word). In addition, one or two recommendations are made each year to the National Churches Trust for Partnership Grants, using NCT’s own web-based procedure.

Receive requests for loan drawdowns and recommend them to the Treasurer, who will monitor the subsequent repayments. These are usually over 4 years with equal annual instalments, although occasionally bridging loans are offered.

Receive and process claims from churches for the release of grant monies and advise the Treasurer accordingly.

Using your records of the above, prepare a short narrative for inclusion in our Spring and Autumn Newsletters.

These duties are estimated to take 2-3 hours of home-working each week on average, plus attendance at meetings.

The Trust runs an Annual Conference, and 4 church tours each summer. The Grants Secretary is warmly invited to attend but is not part of the job description.

For an informal discussion please contact either Andy Clarke (incumbent Grants Secretary) on 01223 861 314 or andy.clarke@tesco.net

or David Stazicker (Secretary to the Trustees) on 01353 778 129 or secretary@camhct.uk