Director of Partnerships

The position

To develop, implement, and manage a robust resource mobilisation strategy, aligning with the AKF regional and global strategy and best practices, AKF East Africa is looking for a dynamic thought leader, with a flexible mindset, and agility in executing iterative, highly participative, and consultative processes involving multi-stakeholders. The Partnerships Director will be a key interface with all AKF regional partners, including donors, government, implementing partners, civil society organisations, private companies, and AKDN agencies.

Key responsibilities include:

Securing funding, brokering new relationships, and strengthening existing ones with bilateral, multilateral, foundations, and corporate donors

• Pipeline development, management, and tracking: build and track a pipeline of funding opportunities, and manage them from early opportunities, through to signing of agreements and project initiation.
• Concept and proposal development: coordinate, facilitate, and lead the development process, review, and quality assurance of concept notes and full proposals for funding opportunities.
• Contracting and negotiations: coordinate and lead processes of contracting and negotiation, engaging relevant stakeholders, in a timely and efficient way.

Building strategic partnerships

• Donor landscaping and analysis: research, scan, and source relevant information regarding new donors and funding opportunities to identify potential funding matches and gather donor intelligence.
• Donor engagement and positioning: engage with new and existing donors and partners to identify new funding opportunities and consistently following up scanning for competitive funding opportunities. Develop positioning materials to enable effective donor engagement.
• Building strategic partnerships: work with AKF Regional CEO, country teams, AKDN agencies, and GPT to identify, build, and support strategic partnerships.

Ensuring first-class grant management:

• Donor relationship management: interface with donors and communicating on a regular basis about the implementation of on-going grants to ensure solid relationships.
• Contractual amendments and adaptations: coordinate contractual amendments, changes, and project adaptations, engage with donors in a pro-active and diplomatic way, and flag potential changes in advance to ensure smooth project implementation.

Influencing development and communicating practical lessons and result:

• Building awareness and strengthening stakeholder relationships: engage with the communications lead to identify opportunities for promoting AKF and AKDN’s work by supporting the development of content, convening and participating at events, positioning AKF as a ‘thought leader’ in development.
• Disseminating Insights: Disseminate lessons learned and achievements, ensuring that practical results are communicated effectively, deepening relationships with key partners and donors, and reinforcing AKF’s leadership in the development field.

Provide supervision and people management to the partnerships team

• Day-to-day management of teams: Provide proper supervision and management for direct reports and lead the establishment and functioning of a strong, effective and coordinated partnerships team.
• Collaboration with Regional Senior Leadership Team (SMT): play an integral role within the Regional SMT, and contribute to the development and execution of strategies to strengthen the organization.
• Engagement with the Governance Team: interface closely with the governance team, with responsibilities encompassing reporting, preparation of governance materials, and enhancing awareness among the governance team regarding the partnership landscape.

The requirements

Qualifications & Skills

• Master’s degree in a relevant field highly preferable
• Ability to set and lead vision in alignment with AKDN/AKF values and strategic plan
• Creativity, critical thinking, and project management
• Must be an entrepreneurial, pro-active self-starter with maturity and emotional intelligence
• Ability to problem-solve, work independently and multi-task in a fast-paced environment with numerous and competing deadlines
• Ability to handle complex relationships with colleagues, governance, and external stakeholders in a professional manner
• Expertise in building strategic partnerships with a variety of stakeholders to support programmatic initiatives and themes.
• Excellent writing, speaking and other communications skills, with thoroughness and attention to detail
• Ability to provide stable, consistent, reliable, and courteous communication when dealing with external organisations, senior colleagues and community members
• Proven ability to engage in thought leadership activities, including awareness building, event participation, and insights dissemination.
• Strong IT skills, including Office and Excel

Knowledge

• Strong proven understanding and knowledge of the development and donor landscape, particularly within the East African context
• Comprehensive understanding of the international development sector, including trends, challenges, and best practices.
• Familiarity with the global philanthropy sector, East African and African philanthropy community, and strategic convening organizations

Experience

• A minimum of 7 years of experience working with humanitarian or international development organisations or donor agencies, including field-level implementation or management.
• Experience in resource mobilisation and developing relationships, including direct experience with EC, WB, USAID, GAC, UN Agencies, philanthropy organizations, and others.
• Experience in developing and writing proposals, concept papers, briefs, executive summaries, as well as coordinating multiple inputs from a variety of sources, and simultaneously managing a variety of relationships
• Proven experience of managing relationships in complex organisations with numerous stakeholders
• Proven success in managing grants in complex organisations with numerous stakeholders
• A history of engaging in thought leadership activities, promoting organizational work, and positioning it as a thought leader in the sector.

Attributes

• Kenyan Nationals only
• Demonstrates equity, transparency, and integrity with high personal and organisational ethical standards; is fair, honest and trustworthy with respect for confidentiality; inspires and builds trust and respect from others; promotes credibility and professional reputation
• Respectful of diversity; sensitive toward others in their context, situation, and challenges; pluralistic, open, and understanding toward other people’s cultures, values, autonomy, and faiths; demonstrates compassion and empathy; is courteous to others with respect for their background, religion, gender and age
• Committed to acting ethically and upholding safeguarding standards towards all staff, volunteers, and beneficiaries of the organisation.

Sector

Social Development

About the Agency

The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), alongside its sister AKDN agencies, has implemented innovative, community-driven solutions to development challenges for over 50 years. It brings together human, financial and technical resources to address some of the challenges faced by the poorest and most marginalised communities in the world. Special emphasis is placed on investing in human potential, expanding opportunity and improving the overall quality of life, especially for women and girls. It works primarily in six areas: Agriculture and Food Security; Economic Inclusion; Education; Early Childhood Development; Health and Nutrition; and Civil Society.