Street Feast Campaign Lead

About the Role

Street Feast is Ireland’s national weekend of street parties and community celebrations, and it’s Neighbourhood Network’s flagship campaign. In sixteen years it has seen over 11,500 Street Feasts take place. We are looking for a Campaign Lead to take full ownership of it.

This is a delivery role. The Campaign Lead is ultimately responsible for Street Feast landing well: the campaign reaching communities across the country, the events happening, the partners and funders getting what they were promised. They set the strategy, hold the budget, lead our partnerships, build the income base that sustains the campaign, and are the public face of Street Feast in the media. They also lead the team that delivers it, and get stuck in alongside them when the campaign calls for it.

The role has been designed to give one person clear ownership of Street Feast, with the authority, the team and the support to match. The Campaign Lead makes the decisions and is backed to make them.

Street Feast has grown steadily for sixteen years and we want it to keep growing. You’ll be building on strong foundations: a committed lead partner in Tesco, a national profile, and thousands of neighbourhoods taking part every year. Your first campaign is about strengthening participation and building a brilliant team around you, with the ambition of growing both reach and income from there.

If you’ve a grá for campaigns, and you want a role where the decisions are actually yours, we’d love to hear from you.

Benefits, Terms and Conditions

• 21 days of paid holidays per year, pro rata, in addition to the standard 10 public holidays, based on hours worked.
• Flexible working hours.
• Time off in lieu (TOIL) for pre-approved additional hours. Street Feast has a pronounced seasonal peak between February and June, and TOIL is actively managed rather than nominal.
• Continuous professional development, training and further education courses, study and exam leave, and professional membership fees, paid for at Neighbourhood Network’s discretion where relevant.
• Travel and subsistence expenses paid in line with public sector rates.
• A supportive and friendly team, and a chance to make a real difference to neighbourhoods.

SUPPORTING INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES

Street Feast – Campaign Lead

This document sits alongside the job description. It sets out how the role works in practice: what the Campaign Lead decides, what stays with the CEO, and how we expect the person in this role to work. Please read it before applying.

Decision-Making and Authority

We have been explicit about this because it matters to how the role works in practice. The role has been designed so that Street Feast is genuinely owned by the Campaign Lead, and that only works if the boundaries are clear from the start.

The Campaign Lead decides: campaign strategy and creative direction; campaign messaging and media lines; allocation of spend within the agreed campaign budget; the shape of the campaign team and who is appointed to it; which contractors are engaged; the campaign timeline.

The CEO decides: the overall campaign budget envelope; signature on contracts and partnership agreements; anything carrying significant organisational, financial or reputational risk; organisational strategy and Street Feast’s place in it.

The Campaign Lead is expected to bring decisions to the CEO for information, not for permission. There is a standing weekly check-in with the CEO through the campaign peak so that support is available without decisions needing to be escalated.

How You’ll Work

As much as experience, we care about how you operate. The person who does well in this role will:

• Be agile. Campaigns change. Partners move deadlines, weather ruins events, stories break. You adapt quickly and keep the campaign moving rather than waiting for the plan to be right again.
• Believe in what we do. Our mission is to tackle loneliness and build neighbourhoods where people support each other. You should genuinely care about that, and it should show in how you treat colleagues, volunteers and the communities we work with.
• Own mistakes early. Things will go wrong. We want someone who says so straight away, without spin, so it can be fixed while it’s still small. Covering up a problem is far worse here than causing one.
• Ask questions sooner rather than later. If something is unclear, ask. We would much rather answer a question in January than unpick a misunderstanding in May.
• Be a firm and fair leader. You set high standards and hold people to them, you give direct feedback, and you are consistent and fair in how you do it. Your team should always know where they stand.

The Campaign Year

Street Feast runs on an annual cycle with a pronounced peak. Planning, partnership and team recruitment run from autumn through January. The campaign accelerates from February, with registrations, marketing, events and media activity building to Street Feast itself in May. Evaluation, reporting and partner renewal follow in July and August.

The seasonal campaign team is recruited each cycle, which means the Campaign Lead hires and inducts a team early in the year and leads them through an intense delivery period. Hours are heavier during the peak and lighter outside it, and TOIL is actively managed to reflect that.