Department: Business Development
Compensation: Specialist Grade
Location and Travel: Kampala, with 5% travel
Reporting to: Country Director
Line Management Responsibility: None
Budget Holder Responsibility: Business Development Budget

WHO THEY ARE
Our client is an international education not-for-profit organisation with the mission to ‘expand access to sustainably delivered, quality secondary education across Africa.’

Since 2008, they have built and operated high-quality, low-cost not-for-profit secondary schools in close partnership with governments in communities where there is urgent unmet demand for secondary education. They currently run 30 secondary schools in Uganda and 6 in Zambia, serving over 19,000 students.

After several rigorous external studies in recent years, they know that the school model works. In Uganda, their students are from the poorest communities and have worse primary school exam results than average. However, once they enrol in their schools, they go on to make faster academic progress than their more privileged peers. Importantly, this is achieved at a lower cost per student than in other school types.

Measuring Impact
As an organisation and individuals, they all have key performance indicators to keep us focused on their overall objectives. They track these throughout the year and review them annually to make sure they align with what they want to achieve. The Grants and Business Development Coordinator’s impact will be measured against the following:

• Grant reports submitted on time, with internal agreed deadlines met (or any unavoidable delays shared with the relationship owner well in advance)
• High quality of narrative and financial reporting delivered, with senior report reviewers and narrative contributors rating the review process as at least 3.5 out of 5 on “Good use of their time”
• Key contributors to grants are aware of their responsibilities, the deliverables of the grant and provide their input to reports by pre-agreed deadlines
• All Country Office staff of Specialist grade and above can articulate how their work plan corresponds to committed grant deliverables and are regularly informed of what activities and spending are due each quarter
• Securing the annual new business income target for in-country funding to their organisation

Roles and Responsibilities
N.B. Approx. 90% of the time will be committed to grants management and 10% to business development.
Grant Reporting

• Lead on timely writing, reviewing and quality assuring narrative and financial reports, including developing templates, assigning tasks to the correct individuals and reviewing the quality of input to ensure it is clear, compelling, and aligned to donor interests and guidelines.
• Communicate clear grant reporting roadmaps to ensure colleagues are aware of their reporting responsibilities and champion strong report-writing skills within the organisation.
• Coordinate and prepare high-quality updates for donor meetings.

Grant Management

• Through monthly grant steering committees and additional meetings, ensure all activity and milestone owners are aware of their milestones, understand what is required to fulfil the requirements, and have a realistic deadline for delivery.
• Work with the Global Grants Manager to use and update grant management information systems and tools.
• Understand, communicate and monitor compliance with donor contract rules and regulations, and ensure compliance across their organisation’s grant delivery.
• Lead on strengthening internal programme and operations staff understanding of their responsibilities under donor running contracts and how this aligns with their work plans.
• Work with the Finance team to review, track and analyse project expenditure. Participate in calls with select donors, representing the team at donor meetings and supporting with timely responses to donor requests.
• Lead on coordination and stewardship over in-country donor visits, including the briefing of schools and colleagues in advance, talking about their work with donors and timely logistics during the visit.
• Have ownership over grant management information systems and tools and mentor country staff to understand reporting, budget management, and grant commitments.

Grant Business Development Support

• Work closely with Operations, M&E and the Programmes Teams to design and package impact data to support quality response to funders.
• Support Programmes and Technical Team colleagues in packaging up and engagingly describing their planned activities.

New Business Development

• Support the Country Director with progressing funding opportunities in the country (institutional and corporate donors) and coordinating outreach and relationship building.
• Work with business development colleagues on the design, writing and reviewing of quality funding proposals and concept papers for submission to funders.

Experience & Qualifications
Essential:

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in relevant field (Finance/Business Development or Social Sciences)
• Expertise in working with donors such as (e.g. EU, DFID/FCDO, USAID) on funding proposals and grant management
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in successfully raising and managing grants in an NGO setting
• High level of numeracy and understanding of financial controls and procedures
• Project management skills
• Understanding of international development issues and donor trends
• Excellent writing skills in English
• Confidence in building relationships internally with senior colleagues and external agencies, and donors

Desired:

• Knowledge of major corporate funding agencies in the country and regionally
• Knowledge of current development philosophies and trends
• Experience in successfully raising and managing bilateral & multilateral funding grants for reputable NGOs

Values and Approach
Anyone they hire will be able to demonstrate their alignment with their values, which are:

• Focus on lasting change: Their work should benefit students and communities now and for generations to come, and so sustainability is core to everything they do. They take into account the wider consequences of what they do, because what matters is maximum long-term impact across society.
• Be collaborative, not competitive: They put true impact before personal or organisational glory. They collaborate within and beyond the organisation to maximise collective impact.
• Be Honest: Trust and integrity are everything. They are transparent about their impact and programmes. They don’t support corruption. They don’t pay bribes. They don’t receive bribes.
• Champion empowerment: They hold each other to account. They maximise autonomy by providing high-quality support to decision-makers throughout the organisation.
• Be entrepreneurial: They were founded with an entrepreneurial spirit, and it is embedded in who they are. They are nimble, ready to respond to new opportunities and challenges. They are not afraid of taking risks and leading the way.
• Adopt a growth mindset: They continually push themselves to improve. They appreciate and learn from mistakes, which they see as a necessary side effect of striving for ever-growing impact.
• Look at the evidence: Evidence can be scarce in their sector. They strive to make use of the available evidence while also contributing their own. Their decisions are based on research and data combined with their practical experience.

They are highly committed to keeping children safe from harm and preventing corruption. They therefore take their responsibility to promote safe recruitment practices very seriously, including conducting appropriate reference and background checks. They also operate a zero-tolerance approach to any employees who breach their Safeguarding and Anti-Corruption Policies, which all employees are required to sign upon induction.