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Job advert - Development Manager

Based: remote but with preference for Sub-saharan Africa or UK. Needs to spend extensive time travelling to Ghana to understand the programme well.  

Summary

 

Our current annual budget is approximately £5m and we plan to double this over the next few years to support our expansion ambitions. 

The majority of our funding is currently from grants (trusts, foundations and institutional grants) and we see this income-stream being the main  way to fund our expansion plans. The postholder will be required to lead prospecting work for new funders,  to  support proposal writing and due diligence processes and to coordinate all our donor reporting, 

In addition, the postholder  would also be expected to lead new projects to diversify our income, for example by gaining support from corporates  (charity of the year, sponsorship, grants) and challenges/competitions.

This is a unique opportunity for an ambitious fundraising generalist to join a fun, high impact, mission driven organisation.  This could be an ideal opportunity for a mid-level Development Manager  looking to grow and develop, or for a mid-level professional with relevant experience to move in to their first management role. 

For a detailed understanding of the role and person criteria, please see the Job Description.

About us

Our mission is to get preschool children in rural Africa school-ready.  At present over 250 million children worldwide fail to receive the education and care they need in their early years which means they are less likely to do well in school, find gainful employment, and are at greater risk of early marriage, early parenthood and even criminality. Current approaches to solving this crisis are not proving effective or scalable in lower middle income countries.

That’s where Lively Minds comes in. We have developed an award-winning Early Childhood Development programme that has been proven through randomised control trial to improve cognitive and socio-emotional skills and reduce malnutrition for pre-schoolers in hard-to-reach communities school-ready, so they have a greater chance of succeeding in school and in life. The programme provides marginalised Mothers with a parenting course that empowers them to run educational Play Schemes for pre-schoolers and to provide better home-based care, using cheap local resources. In addition, we started a radio programme for parents during COVID and this has now become a permanent fixture.  The programme is delivered through government partners, is cheap and highly scalable. It genuinely has the potential to play a transformative role in ending the global ECD crisis.

We are extremely proud that the Government of Ghana have now adopted the programme and we have a ground-breaking partnership with them to support them to institutionalise it, fund it and to scale it to 60 education districts, reaching over 4000 communities and 1million children. In addition, an award-winning international research team are conducting a further randomised control trial to help us understand its impacts at scale. We see this as the test case that will provide the blueprint to take the programme to scale it to a new country within the next few years.

We’re a lively ambitious organisation, determined to have a major positive impact on the world. We work hard, at a fast pace, in a challenging environment. We expect everyone to give their best to achieve the best possible results. Our work is demanding but provides plenty of opportunity for innovation, responsibility, growth, collaboration, creativity and fun. We want all staff to be happy, fulfilled and to feel appreciated and valued in their work.

How to apply

Please download an application form Please send your completed application form together with your  CV to jobs@livelyminds.org before the deadline.

Deadline for applications: 11:59pm BST on Sunday 10th September 2023.

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