Development Associate (Grant Writing & Reporting)
Job posted by: One Acre Fund
Posted on: March 3, 2015
Job description
Wanted
Highly capable candidate with two to five years of experience and strong writing abilities to help our organization grow to a new level of impact and scale.
Duration
Minimum 2 years commitment, full-time job.
Organization Description
Most of the world's poor are farmers, representing the largest and most uniform group of poor people in the world. One Acre Fund is a growing social enterprise in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania that is innovating a new way of helping farm families to achieve their full potential. Instead of giving handouts, One Acre Fund invests in farmers to generate a permanent gain in farm income. We provide farmers with a "service bundle" that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market facilitation. Our program is proven impactful – every year, we weigh thousands of harvests and measure 50-100% average gain in farm income per acre. We have laser-like focus on generating better lives for the people that we serve.
Job Description
One Acre Fund is devoted to improving our level of service to Africa's smallholders season after season. We are constantly growing in scale, impact, and sustainability; our ability to do so reliably and rapidly depends on raising an ambitious level of external funding.
We are seeking a highly capable and motivated individual to support our growing fund development team in both grant writing and reporting. We want someone who has a passion for communicating complicated ideas in a simple way. Prior experience with grants is not required in this role – being a structured and inspiring prose writer and having a good business mind are the most important prerequisites. This person must be able to step back, understand our programs and needs, and write a strategic appeal that is well-tailored to the grant opportunity at hand. This role will likely start by writing smaller grants, but quickly move into the $500,000+ gift range.
This is also a career-track position, with growth potential to help build out our development team, train other staff members, and take on management of different writing and reporting functions.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities
- Write concept notes and proposals for grants. Some key characteristics of our writing:
- We do not copy and paste – we tailor our language to each new funder. Most of our funders are quite sophisticated, which keeps our proposals dynamic and interesting to work on.
- We make heavy use of business rationale, hard M&E results, tables and charts, etc.
- We emphasize clear logical flow in our writing.
- We often prepare for our writing with significant research; an ideal candidate would be a skilled and enthusiastic researcher.
- Understand our core business intimately. We are seeking someone with a strong business mind. The professional funders we work with do not just want smooth prose – they want business rationale and a tailored message. This position would receive in-depth exposure to our field program to help build an understanding of our operations.
- Write high-quality reports for funders. One Acre Fund values our current funders above all others, and we work very hard to provide them with compelling, accurate, and transparent reports about our the progress and results of our field programs.
- Keep organized. We are not a boss-employee culture. We would like to hire someone who can manage his or her own work, and who does not need to be reminded to do things. This person should own the role.
- Hire, develop, and manage others. As we plan to expand our writing staff over the next few years, we are looking for someone who could see herself or himself building a career with our organization in the long term.
Career Growth and Development
One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager will invest significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about. Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions. This results in fast career growth for our staff.
Qualifications
We are seeking an exceptional professional with 2 to 5+ years of work experience, and a demonstrated long-term passion for international development. We are looking for truly extraordinary candidates that will help take our organization to a new level of impact and scale. This is a competitive posting for a career-track role with a minimum initial commitment of two years. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:
- Required: Either substantial field experience or 1+ year of professional writing experience.
- Strong demonstrated writing ability. In your writing samples, we will be looking for confident, clear, error-free prose.
- Genuine interest in international development/agriculture. We are seeking someone with a demonstrated connection to international development/agriculture, who is truly passionate about providing opportunity to the hardest-working farmers on the planet. Direct experience in this field is a big plus.
- Strong ability to understand business. We would like to hire someone who will truly understand our operations, and be able to communicate about them simply and effectively.
- Skill in graphic design/desktop publishing is also a big plus.
- Top-performing undergraduate background. Candidates with graduate degrees also encouraged to apply. For all candidates: please include your GPA and test scores on your resume.
- Humility. We are looking for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service to join our growing family of leaders.
- Language: English required
Preferred Start Date
Immediate
Compensation
Commensurate with experience.
Benefits
Health insurance, 401k and 529 education fund matching contributions, flexible work environment
Sponsor International Candidates
Yes
How to apply
Please find the job posting here. You will find details of the job as well as application instructions at the bottom of the job description.
Location
- New York, NY, US
Details
- Education requirements
- Employment type
- Full time
- Professional level
- None specified
- Job function
- Owner's areas of focus
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