Head of Partnership Engagement

Position Overview

Educate!, is looking for a Head of Partnership Engagement to help us reach our goal of impacting millions of youth annually. As Head of Partnership Engagement, you will be a key member of the External Relations team that builds relationships with funders and other potential partners. While this job has a fundraising component, we are not looking for a traditional business development professional. Instead, we are looking for a collaborative, proactive professional who can both ensure that we are always able to keep our funding pipeline healthy and can represent Educate! in public.

Educate!’s work today impacts youth across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda. We are in a growth period in terms of budget and impact. The Head of Partnership Engagement, would work with the Global Director of Growth and Revenue to develop and implement strategies to expand our network of partners and secure funding for our programs and initiatives to ensure we provide avenues to continue to grow. The right person for this role will enjoy strategically and creatively navigating complex situations 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! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1) introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and 

2) delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 250,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives

Relationship Management

• Manage Key relationships with both existing and potential funders. 
• Work within the Educate! Relationship management framework to both own independent relationships and drive forward key relationships owned by the CEO. 
• Learns and is accountable for the Educate way of relationship management, with a focus on:
  • Responsiveness: Always respond to any message or request within 24 hours (and ideally within 4-6 hours if it’s within business day) - even if just to say when you’ll have an update. Always confirm that you’re working on it for things that might take longer. 
  • Proactive, frequent, and strategic communications: Generally, we want to have a personalized interaction of some type with all live relationships at least once a quarter. The time when someone receives your communication matters (best between 11 am Monday and 4 pm Thursday), use the “schedule to send” feature!
  • Strategic prep for meetings: We never go into our funder interactions cold, we always have a strategy and a good prep document. Every interaction meaningfully moves forward our relationship in a specific way.
  • Prompt follow up: After any interaction, follow up within 24 hours, and sooner if possible (ideally immediately).
  • Effective record-keeping: Take notes during or immediately after interactions, and make sure these notes are sent and stored in Salesforce (ideally within 24 hours). Hone in on what’s truly the most important to remember.

Representing Educate! Externally

• Own relationships with important funders and payers; 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, with excellent follow-up that ensures movement into active relationships.
• Identify new funding opportunities through calls for proposals and building a 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.

Operationalize Agreements

• Collaborate with internal teams to understand the requirements and expectations of funders.
• Coordinate the implementation of agreements, ensuring compliance with funder requirements and internal policies.
• Monitor and track progress against agreement milestones and deliverables.
• Provide regular updates to funders on project status, including financial reporting and impact assessments.
• Identify and address any issues or challenges that may arise during the implementation of agreements.
• Support the development of funding proposals and reports to funder

Qualifications 

• A minimum of 5-7 years total work experience, with increasing responsibility and independence
• Ability to develop and implement strategic partnership and fundraising plans that align with the organization's goals and objectives.
• Relationship Building: Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build and maintain relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, including donors, partners, and colleagues.
• Comfortable working with a remote team and partners
• A well-honed sense of professional judgment, integrity, and accountability: You’ll be responsible for some of our most mission-critical workflows, a dynamic team, and some of our most valuable and sensitive relationships. 

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 of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value. 
2. We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.
3. We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
4. We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.
5. We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 

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. 

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.

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