Educate! Uganda - Grants & Partnerships Associate - Job

Position: Grants & Partnerships Associate with Educate! Uganda

Application Deadline: 9 July 2018 

How to Apply: Email shamim@staffableafrica.com with your CV and short-form responses to the following questions below: 

1.  Why Educate!? Why this role? Tell us what excites you about it and how it fits into your career goals. 
2. Tell us about a time when you worked on a project and had to go above and beyond to get the job done. How did you approach it and how did it turn out? 

Location: Kampala, Uganda 

Start Date: As Soon As Possible 

Company Description: 

Educate! works to transform education in Africa to teach youth to solve poverty for themselves and their communities providing youth with skills training in leadership, entrepreneurship and workforce readiness along with mentorship to start real businesses at school. Our model is delivered through practically-trained teachers and youth mentors. Educate!’s goal is to make this practical, skills-based model part of national education systems. 

In 2018 we’re launching in Kenya, working in 175 secondary schools in Rwanda and over 700 schools in Uganda (25% of the country) reaching over 42,000 students intensively and 530,000 more broadly. Our model was proven to have massive impact in a randomized controlled trial. Graduates earned DOUBLE the income of a control group and had a 64% increase in business creation. Our graduates change their lives and their communities, such as Lillian Aero who employs over 100 AIDS-affected women. 

In 2012 Educate! partnered with Uganda’s government to integrate curriculum and a student business club structure into Uganda's entrepreneurship course nationally, in 2015 we served as a technical advisor to Rwanda on its secondary education reform, and in 2016 we began serving as a technical advisor to Kenya on its national curriculum reform. 

Educate!’s team includes almost 200 staff and almost 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations such as MasterCard, Big Bang Philanthropy, Mulago, Echoing Green, Ashoka and Global Innovation Fund. Educate! won the 2015 WISE Awards, and was featured by Bill Gates, an Al Jazeera documentary, Forbes 30 under 30, Clinton Global Initiative and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. 

Educate!'s vision for 2024 is to measurably impact 1 million students and reach 4 million students more broadly across Africa each year. 

Job Summary: 

Educate!, a fast-growing nonprofit social enterprise, is looking for a Grants and Partnerships Associate to join its ambitious, high-performing team. Based in Kampala, Uganda the Grants and Partnerships Associate will help us meet and exceed our fundraising goals by putting together engaging site visits for donors and partners, producing high-quality grant reports and proposals, and supporting our fundraising and East Africa teams to help us reach even greater heights. 

We are looking for a self-starter with meticulous attention to detail, excellent writing skills, and exceptional communication and relationship-building abilities. The Grants and Partnerships Associate is an early career position with major potential for professional growth and learning. In this role, you will have a chance to engage directly with some of Educate!’s most critical donors and partners, work closely with the East African teams who implement our programs on the ground, and develop compelling content and materials to showcase our impact to key stakeholders. You’ll join a motivated, passionate, overachieving international team that is positioning Educate! to be the leader in skills-based secondary education in Africa and intensively impact one million youth each year by 2024. 

KPIs: 

Grant Reports 

You’ll work with our fundraising team to ensure that Educate! meets and exceeds our obligations to donors by producing high-quality grant reports that keep our stakeholders informed and connected to Educate!'s progress and mission. 

• Write and project manage high-quality grant reports, collaborating with other team members as needed 
• Work closely with in-country teams to gather information needed for reporting and donor materials 
• Support the team in streamlining systems and processes to make grant reporting and information sourcing more efficient 

Grant Proposals 

We are always working to expand our donor base, and grant proposals are a critical step in the funding lifecycle. In this role, you will work with the fundraising team to develop comprehensive, engaging and tailor-made proposals to submit to prospective and current funders. 

• Write and project manage high-quality grant proposals that are customized to address the key focus areas and requirements of prospective and current donors. 

• Help field follow-up and diligence requests from donors related to pending or submitted grant proposals. 

Donor & Partner Visits 

We’re building the reputation and support base to position Educate! as the leader in skills-based education in Africa, and that includes being able to effectively show our partners what our work looks like on the ground. In this role, you will work with the External Relations Manager to: 

• • Design, coordinate, and prepare for donor and partner visits in Uganda and Rwanda ensure that programmed activities run smoothly 
• • Represent Educate! in person and over email to international donors and partners 
• • Lead engaging and informative site and field visits for international donors and partners visiting the program 

Team Support 

Educate! is growing, but we still embrace our start-up culture! As part of the Team, you’ll support colleagues in the U.S. and in Africa on fundraising and other external relations projects as needed. Example projects include: 

• Conduct research to support Educate!’s strategy for engaging with bilateral and multilateral donors 
• Source information from in-country team members and craft responses to answer donor or partner questions 
• Lead in-person or virtual informational meetings to share more about Educate!’s work with peers 

Qualifications: 

This is an early career role, well-suited for those with 1-3 years of work experience. The ideal candidate will be: 

• An exceptional communicator and relationship-builder in diverse settings, from a classroom to a conference room 
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable managing complex projects with many moving pieces 
• A self-starter, able to prioritize and manage multiple assignments, take initiative, and work independently 
• A strong writer 
• A collaborative and flexible team player, excited to learn and pitch in where needed 
• Experienced with traveling or living abroad, especially in East Africa (helpful but not required) 

And we’re also requiring for this position: 

• Bachelor’s degree (related area not necessary) 
• Native-level proficiency in spoken and written English 
• Minimum commitment of one (1) year, with a preference for those willing to stay longer. 
• A good fit with our Five Cultural Tenets (see “What is Educate! About?” Below; learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here.) 

Terms: 

• Located in Kampala, Uganda, working alongside our rockstar Uganda and regional teams. 
• Benefits & perks include a generous vacation policy, health insurance, and breakfast in the office! 

Why You Will Brag About Working At Educate! 

• We’ve got the impact. 
• Educate! is designed for scale. We have grown more than 10x since 2014 from 54 to over 700 schools served. We carefully measure our outcomes, and—here’s the best part—we are maintaining quality at four times the size. 
• We believe in local leadership — 99% of our on-the-ground staff is African. 
• Our model has gone nationwide in Uganda: we are now implementing the Educate! Experience in all five regions of the country, intensively impacting more than 28,000 youth and reaching hundreds of thousands more broadly through Educate!-trained teachers and our national reform efforts. 
• Educate is a well-oiled learning machine. We built our model by methodically testing hundreds of assumptions and we are constantly experimenting, evaluating, and improving. 
• We’re honored to have been recognized by key global thought leaders and publications, including Bill Gates, the Brookings Institution, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. 

What Is Educate! About? 

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey. 

1. We Put Youth First - The youth we serve come first. Always. In everything. That means we wake up thinking of ways we can serve youth even better and get the highest impact out of every dollar that we spend. It means Educate! doesn’t own a single vehicle, because we’d rather take the bus if it means one more student can participate. It means making every decision like the future depends on it — because if we get our way, it does. 
2. We Are Always Learning - When you work at Educate!, educating yourself is part of your job too. We encourage every employee to find the best book on management; share the latest article on graphic design; bring in your favorite college mentor; or meet the researcher pushing the edge of the field. We are always thirsty for knowledge and love to share. 
3. We Only Solve a Problem Once - We are allergic to band-aids so we love the person who brings the new system to solve the problem for good, even problems we haven’t recognized yet. 
4. We Are Flexible - We thrive on change — we’re driving it. We are growing every day, so we have to adapt quickly to meet new challenges, and our team keeps up. 
5. We Exceed Expectations - We assume we can achieve the impossible because we already have, year after year. We want our staff to create your own challenges, ask the toughest questions, and dream scary big! 

• Every person at Educate! — from interns to the Executive Director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. 
• Educate! is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.