Educate! is looking for a driven and strategic Head of Business Development to help us grow our funding base to match our ambitious impact goals.
Minimum Qualification: Bachelor
Experience Level: Senior level
Experience Length: 5 years
Job Description/Requirements
Position Overview
Educate! is looking for a driven and strategic Head of Business Development to help us grow our funding base to match our ambitious impact goals. As Head of Business Development, you’ll work closely with our external relations and product teams to develop funding partnerships with bilaterals, multilaterals, and large foundations that can catapult Educate!’s impact to the next level. Today, Educate!’s work impacts in-school youth across Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. The Head of Business Development will support the CEO to generate funding to expand our impact to out-of-school youth and to new countries, driving towards our long-term vision of measurably impacting millions of youth across Africa each year and redefining the concept of post-primary education for this generation of youth.
We’re looking for someone who has significant experience working with bilaterals, multilaterals, and/or the largest foundations (such as Gates, MasterCard), and is excited to be part of building a pathway to the future for the largest youth skills provider in East Africa. The right person for this role will enjoy strategically and creatively navigating large institutions and building relationships to achieve impact goals. You’ll join a motivated, dynamic, and high-performing team committed to personal and professional development and impacting youth.
About Educate!Educate! prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy. We are a non-profit social enterprise with 150 staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors.
We tackle youth unemployment by partnering with schools and governments to reform what schools teach and how they teach it so that students in Africa have the skills to attain further education, overcome gender inequities, start businesses, get jobs and drive development in their communities. 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.
Check out our COVID response page on our website to see how we’ve adapted to respond to school closures in East Africa in 2020.
In 2019, we partnered with the government to pilot in 60+ schools in Kenya, worked in 275+ secondary schools in Rwanda, and 800+ schools in Uganda (25% of the country), reaching over 46,000 students intensively and 470,000 more broadly. Two rigorous external evaluations, including a randomized controlled trial, found that towards the end of secondary school, our program participants earn nearly DOUBLE the income of their peers. A follow-up RCT found that four years later, our graduates demonstrate large and durable shifts in skills, coupled with significant improvements in education and gender equity-related outcomes. Girls achieve even greater results. Our graduates change their lives and their communities, such as Daniel who leveraged both his medical education and the transferable and business skills gained through Educate! to open a rural health clinic in his community employing two people and conducting about 350 checkups per month.
We have been backed by top foundations such as MasterCard, Big Bang Philanthropy, Mulago, Echoing Green, Ashoka, and Global Innovation Fund. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (and was featured in a video), a 2015 WISE Award, and was highlighted by Bill Gates, in the World Bank’s S4YE’s Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, Forbes 30 under 30, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN’s Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions.
Educate!’s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.
Performance ObjectivesRelationship Strategy
Identify potential new funding opportunities and ways into their networks
Strategically Educate!’s relationships with bilaterals, multilaterals, and the largest foundations
Lead the sales mapping process for this portfolio of new funders
Work with marketing team to ensure consistent messaging and contribute to marketing strategy for this portfolio of funders
Proposal Editor/Strategist
Drive and edit proposals for $1 million and up and/or all proposals to bilaterals and the largest foundations
Work with our product team to generate proposals with customized messages for each funder while enabling development of repeatable program models
Oversee our Senior Business Development Specialist on content creation and ensure that they liaise with the programs team for most up to date information
Representing Educate Externally
Own relationships with mid-level staff at bilaterals, multilaterals and large foundations; support the CEO in meetings and relationships with the highest-level staff
Speak on panels or at conferences about Educate!’s work
Network and build relationships at conferences and events
Network Opportunities
Identify new funding opportunities through calls for proposals and building network of contacts at key funders
Build a reputation as a thought partner and advisor to potential partners and relevant institutions
Understand the inner workings of partner organizations and identify changes in strategy and new opportunities
Qualifications
A minimum of 5-7 years total work experience, including experience working with multiple bilaterals, multilaterals, and/or the largest foundations (such as Gates, MasterCard, Co-Impact)
At least 3 years of experience in the international nonprofit or development consulting sector, including at least three years working in fundraising or business development
Comfortable with remote work — this role can be based almost anywhere, though ideal locations would be Africa or Europe
A well-honed sense of professional judgment, integrity, and accountability: you’ll have responsibility for some of our most mission-critical workflows, a dynamic team, and some of our most valuable and sensitive relationships.
A flexible, collaborative attitude, openness to feedback and change, and ambition to learn and grow.
A track record of professional growth and excellence.
You should be a fit for and be excited by our Five Cultural Tenets. These active values are core to the way we work at Educate!, from hiring to performance management and promotions for everyone from our front line mentors in the field to our Board members, and they inform how we make decisions on everything from highest level strategy to where we go for lunch—We encourage you to learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here.
Educate! believes our team is better and stronger with a diversity of perspectives and experiences. We welcome applications from candidates historically underrepresented in the nonprofit sector, especially within the international development sector. If you do not meet all stated qualifications but feel you can succeed within this role, please consider applying for this position, particularly if you are a candidate with an identity that is marginalized within the United States. Educate! is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment.
What Is Educate! About?We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up 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 grow their skills and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We Exceed Expectations – We assume we can achieve the impossible because we already have, year after year. We want our staff to tackle 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.
