Jodie-Anne Robinson-McBride

What does your job involve day-to-day?

I drive income strategy and financial sustainability for our charity by managing and optimising our income streams. I work closely with fundraising, grant, and operations teams to forecast income accurately, analyse income and drive decision making. 
 
My key responsibilities include analysing donor and grant performance, patterns in donor activity, relating this to the wider socio-economic context for meaningful insight and ensuring compliance with funder terms and reporting requirements. Alongside ensuring all this is done in line with our wider mission. 
 
I am tasked with consistently streamlining and innovating new efficiencies in reporting and analysis. By providing timely, clear financial analysis and creative solutions, I enable the fundraising team to make data-driven decisions and demonstrate impact to supporters. 
 
Ultimately, I work part of a wider Team ensuring good stewardship of donor funds to achieve our wider mission as a Charity. 

 
How did your degree help prepare you for the role?

My degree prepared me by grounding me in ethics, stewardship, and diversity the core principles that underpinning charity finance. Additionally developing critical, analytical and interpretive skills essential for financial analysis. 
 
In theology, there's rarely one "correct" answer—it's about reasoning, building narratives, and interpreting complex information. This translates directly to finance: presenting data through narrative, making reasoned judgments, and recognising that financial decisions involve interpretation and context. Understanding behaviour and motivation informs how I approach my narrative and through what lenses I view financial performance. 
 
Rather than viewing finance as purely technical, I approach it as a values-driven practice. 
 

What do you enjoy most about your current job?

What I enjoy most about my current role is the opportunity to make a difference. Each piece of analysis, narrative, even excel spreadsheet, gives someone valuable insight - allowing us to reach more of those we serve. 
 
I love my opportunity to constantly be challenging conventional thinking, I didn’t take the normal track into finance, so using my unique perspective to drive process improvement and efficiency energises me. 
 
To summarise, though yes l do love numbers, I love being able to take raw financial data, understand its context and meaning, and help others see what it really tells them. 

What was the most important thing you learned during you time in TRS?  

This is a hard choice. Personally, the value of community was key. It was the core of everything I studied and the department itself. 
 
However motivation and context in faith and culture rises to the top. What drives a person in their interpretation of a piece of text or how their faith informs their actions honestly serves me every day. Whether it be a social setting or a professional one. It gifted me the patience to not jump to conclusions or make assumptions - thinking more about the why and the grey areas rather than the black and white.  
 

Tell us about your future plans 

My future plans are currently to continue growing in Finance in the Charity sector. I have done multiple qualifications along the way however I am currently doing “the big one” and working through my exams to be become a Chartered accountant.  From there, I hope to do a further postgraduate or professional certification in Business Anthropology or something similar. All I truly know is that I want to continue to use what I have learned over the years, build on it, and help, even in a small way, make a psoitive social impact.