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Opinion: We can help to ease the pain of death
By John Knight, Third Sector, 4 June 2008
I am feeling maudlin. And I am not the only lugubrious scribe at the moment. I recently happened to chance upon the sometimes entertaining 'Bubb's blog' on the Acevo website. My fellow optimist was waxing lyrical about his burial plot purchase in a "green lush valley".
Dying is something we will all experience. At the start of Joan Didion's play The Year of Magical Thinking, an account of the author's emotions following the sudden death of her husband, Vanessa Redgrave, who plays her, promises the audience that they will go through the same journey. Maybe not exactly the same journey, but the same feelings.
Preparing to die is something I wrote about recently when I recounted the work of the British hospice movement. But what about those left behind? Does the third sector have a role in helping them? Of course. Many of you will have heard about the bereavement counselling charity Cruse Bereavement Care. It helps people to unpack and understand their grief.
But there is more to Cruse. It has done substantial work to provide support to bereaved children, whose needs are understandably different from those of adults. It has also done work specifically to address traumatic death - the sudden, often horrific, demise of somebody close.
Another charity that has expertise in dealing with such matters is the Natural Death Centre. It helps people to arrange inexpensive, family-run and environmentally friendly funerals. I have attended too many funerals without soul or individuality, where the person who has died almost becomes an irrelevance. The Natural Death Centre is slowly shifting attitudes and empowering people to take control of how they say goodbye and establish tangible memories. It works closely with the funeral industry to generate a more individual and ecological approach to funerals.
I find the idea of resting for evermore beneath a sea of bluebells in a banana leaf coffin strangely appealing. But like my fellow scribe, I hope you are not expecting an early move.
- John Knight is assistant director, policy and campaigns, at Leonard Cheshire Disability: jk.thirdsector@googlemail.com.
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One Small Voice?, 5 June 2008, 16:57
Given John's previous kind and supportive words about the hospive movement, it's worth adding that very many hospice's also provide the sort of bereavement counselling that Cruse specialises in.My own hospice has recently recruited a highly qualified child bereavement support worker to meet the very particular needs of children who have lost a parent (or other key adult in their lives). The new appointee fits neatly in to an established team of social workers and bereavement counsellors who provide holistic support not just to the patient but also their family (both pre and post bereavement).
Finally, without wanting to spend too long on the soap box, it's true to say that hospices concern themselves with helping people to avoid the indignity of a funeral lacking soul of individuality. I know for certain that my hospice's social work and chaplaincy teams devote a great deal of time and effort to working with families to help them make the decisions that are right for them.
It's certainly not that we're in any way 'better' than Cruse or the Natural Death Centre, both of which I'm sure are excellent organisations, it's just that sometimes people who have formed a relationship of trust at a particularly sensitive time prefer to receive their specialist support from the hospice that has cared for them throughout.
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