Grassroot Soccer Partnerships (GRSP) Latest Available Employment Vacancy

Grassroot Soccer (GRS) is a rapidly growing adolescent health organisation that leverages the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilise at-risk youth in developing countries to overcome their greatest health challenges, live healthier, more productive lives, and be agents for change in their communities. Since 2002, GRS has reached over 2 million young people in 50 countries with life-saving HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health information and services. Grassroot Soccer is looking to significantly scale its impact via partnerships over the next five years, and reach over 1 million young people annually.

 

Job Title: Managing Director, Global Partnerships
Location: Cape Town

The Grassroot Soccer Partnerships (GRSP) Team oversees GRS relationships with a wide a range of implementing partner organisations across over 50 countries, with a focus on Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, and Mozambique. With GRS support, implementing partners integrate the GRS model into their youth programming. The GRSP team supports these organisations with our Technical Assistance approach to replicate the GRS model and provides remote and in-person technical support to these organisations to increase their capacity to deliver GRS interventions in their communities and engage the community to build responsive systems to address the needs of adolescents.

The Managing Director (MD) of Grassroot Soccer Global Partnerships is responsible for programme delivery, operations, and impact demonstration in her/his business unit (“Impact Team”) and holds a critical position on the Grassroot Soccer (GRS) Global Senior Management Team (SMT), which includes Directors of each business unit and the senior global leadership team. The Managing Director works collaboratively with GRS senior leadership in leading and directing her/his Impact Team to contribute to Grassroot Soccer’s global mission and 5 Year Strategic Plan.

Position Summary:

The Managing Director (MD) is a seasoned manager with 10+ years’ experience implementing, overseeing, and managing health and/or education programmes in a comparable geographic context. The Managing Director is a skillful people manager with demonstrated expertise in all aspects of project, programme, and partnership management – s/he is a teambuilder and a delegator, and has demonstrated success in developing systems and holding individuals accountable. The successful MD is a resourceful manager with excellent interpersonal skills, sound judgment, adept problem-solving abilities, a collaborative approach to building partnerships both internally and externally, while ensuring effective implementation of youth-centered programmes that make a real impact.

In addition, s/he thrives within a matrixed organisation, which requires consulting, collaborating, and soliciting input across the global organisation to achieve the GRS mission.

Responsibilities:

Programme Delivery and Excellence

• Oversee programme strategy and excellence in delivery and implementation in accordance with grant agreements and the GRS 5 Year Strategy
• Monitor and ensure program quality through routine programme data monitoring, evaluation, research, and grant management
• Ensure excellence in GRS programme delivery via partner consortia and technical support to partners implementing GRS curriculum and model
• Adhere to grant and project requirements in line with donor expectations, coordinating closely with the Global Business Development team
• Drive program improvement through periodic reviews of routine monitoring of data, research, and evaluations
• Work closely with the GRS Functional teams (Partnering Strategy, Business Development, Monitoring & Evaluation, Curriculum, Marketing & Communications) to ensure organisational strategy, evidence-based practices, research findings, and lessons learned are documented, applied, and tracked for program improvements, effective grant management, organisational learning, and achievement of impact

Operations & Financial Management, and Human Resources

• Ensure strategic, efficient and fiscally responsible use of organisational resources for optimal impact and sustainability
• Develop and effectively implement annual strategic workplans with input from Global Functional Teams, the approval of the Regional Director, and adherence to organisational policies
• Develop, seek approval for, and implement annual budgets in accordance with grant commitments, Global and national strategies and priorities, with the approval of the Global Finance team
• Build, mentor, and retain a high-quality team to support key organisational functions: programmes/grant management, finance, monitoring & evaluation, and business and partnership development
• Drive a performance-based culture of excellence and accountability with specific attention to adherence to best practice, local laws, legal frameworks, and regulations, including those related to child protection, gender equity, and sexual harassment
• Cultivate, manage, and support a culturally diverse team that is spread across multiple geographies

External Relations, Partnership Cultivation, and Business Development

• Identify, prioritize and capture new opportunities with the 5 priority geographies (Tier 1) and determine strategic level of programming in Tier 2 and 3 geographies to enable GRS to scale while delivering consistently high-quality programming through successful partnerships
• Develop and implement national strategies for government influence, integration and adoption of GRS programmes and/or approach
• Cultivate and manage relationships with government agencies, INGOs, CBO/FBO, research institutions, UN agencies and other international development partners to explore and build a pipeline of strategic partnerships and new business
• Work collaboratively with the Global Business Development and Partnership Strategy teams to assess and respond to relevant funding and partnership opportunities (Go-No- Go decision-making)
• Promote and operationalize showcasing opportunities with support and input from the Partnering Strategy, Fundraising and Business Development teams for high priority donors and partners
• Contribute to and inform national strategies through the generation and dissemination of strategic information
• Maintain excellent relationships with high value donors, partners, businesses, and other relevant stakeholders
• Uphold GRS’s excellent reputation and manage reputational risk by proactive gap analysis, risk identification, and escalation to appropriate teams for mitigation planning and support
• Ensure simultaneous alignment of Grassroot Soccer’s global and national or sub-national strategies and priorities through frequent reporting on trends and demands from national-level stakeholders
• Represent GRS at global, national, and local events and be able to speak on behalf of the organisation as a whole

Qualifications:

• 10+ years managing programmes and/or operations in a national or multinational nonprofit
• At least 5+ years in a senior management position
• Experience overseeing implementation of organisational or programme budgets of at least $5M annually
• Demonstrated experience working with a range of different stakeholders (e.g. global headquarters, prime partners, ministry officials, local boards and programme teams)
• Demonstrated experience strategising in complex scenarios, forecasting possible outcomes and proactively managing against those outcomes
• Willingness and ability to travel (approximately 30% of time; up to 50% in busy months)
• Excellent written and oral English communication skills required, additional languages preferred (French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo, and Amharic are primary languages in GRS priority geographies)

Ideal candidate should have exceptional skills in the following:

• Inspiring and leading teams while holding them accountable for results
• Proactively managing programmes and projects and ensuring challenges are attended to before they become problems
• Managing change and complexity in a growing organisation
• Building relationships with wide range of staff and partners, and operating within diverse social and cultural contexts, often virtually over multiple continents and time zones
• Communicating effectively, both oral and written, with wide range of external and internal stakeholders (e.g. Ambassadors, Ministers, Civil Society leaders, board members, senior leadership, staff, young people)
• Ability to see and tell stories from numbers in budgets and programme data
• Maintaining oversight over a large range of programmes, projects, and partnerships while ensuring effective prioritisation of time and effort

Ideal candidate should demonstrate the following traits:

Successful leaders at Grassroot Soccer are bold, yet humble. They are passionate about the mission of Grassroot Soccer, and understand their role on the Grassroot Soccer team to achieve its mission.

Day to day, they are…

• Proactive: can anticipate both opportunities and obstacles, and take action
• Professional: level-headed; ability to de-escalate difficult situations, behave exceptionally, and manage/minimize distractions
• Problem Solvers: comfortable with ambiguity, can creatively unlock bottlenecks and turn problems into opportunities

…they demonstrate lots of…

• Common Sense: prioritizing the right things at the right time; making good, quick, informed decisions balancing multiple issues and points of view
• Self-awareness: know where one’s blind spots are, recognize differences, and build a team to complement one’s skills and weaknesses

…and a strong bias for…

• Follow-through and Outcomes: deliver results, not just create lots of activity
• Treating People Well: empathetic, kind, great listener, yet can make tough decisions and hold oneself/others accountable

To Apply:

Please submit a CV and cover letter to [email protected].  Title the email “Managing Director Global Partnerships”. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Application Deadline:  15th September, 2019