Director of Grantmaking and Feminist Partnerships at Womankind Worldwide

Responsibilities

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

• Serve as a key member of the Senior Management Team, contributing to whole-organisation leadership, strategic decision-making, and culture-building. 
• Drive the implementation of Womankind’s 2030 Feminist Future Strategy, ensuring our grant making, partnerships and learning advances our vision and strategic goals. 
• Model feminist leadership, fostering collective care, wellbeing, and anti-racism practice across the organisation. 
• Contribute to organisational sustainability and innovation, including income generation, safeguarding, and risk management. 
• As an SMT member engage with and report on performance against programmes and grant making plans to the Board of Trustees. 
• Lead the development of and manage the annual budget, and midyear reforecasts for your team including oversight of restricted and designated expenditure. 

FEMINIST PARTNERSHIPS & PROGRAMMES LEADERSHIP 

• Lead our feminist partnership approach with women’s rights organisations and feminist movements, grounded in mutual respect, solidarity, and shared power. 
• Champion decolonial, trust-based grant-making practices, enabling flexible, responsive, and sustainable funding. 
• Oversee the design, delivery, and learning of feminist programmes and grant making portfolios in the organisation. 
• Strengthen learning, reflection, and knowledge sharing across partnerships, creating spaces for innovation and collective learning. 
• Build and nurture strategic alliances with feminist movements, peer organisations, and funders aligned with our vision and values. Engage with Womankind partners in our focus countries to ensure our programmes and grant making are grounded in their realities and contexts. 
• Responsible for overall programme management of key Womankind programmes/projects ensuring donor and internal compliance and technical quality assurance. 
• Work with the Policy & Communications team to provide strategic and practical input on projects and programmes where relevant and appropriate. 
• To work with SMT colleagues on compliance with quality assurance processes regarding management of the programmes and grant making portfolios. 
• Work with the Fundraising & Marketing team on major funding applications, including undertaking technical review and sign off. This includes input into the development portfolio and emerging plans in cooperation with the Fundraising & Marketing team to support their work to match funding opportunities with Womankind and partner priorities.

TEAM LEADERSHIP 

• Lead, manage, support and develop a multi-disciplinary and geographically dispersed team, fostering inclusive ways of working in line with our strategic goal to value our team and organisational values. 
• Ensure team members have relevant skills and knowledge, support professional development, and foster cross-organisational learning and collaboration. 
• Represent the team and contribute towards the leadership and strategic direction of Womankind as a member of the SMT.

COMMUNICATIONS, REPRESENTATION, NETWORKING AND PROFILE BUILDING 

• Advocate for feminist approaches within international development, philanthropy, and donor communities. 
• Represent Womankind in external spaces to influence systems change and resource mobilisation for feminist movements. 
• Identify and engage in opportunities to further develop Womankind’s reputation and profile in relation to programmes and partnerships approach. 
• Participate in UK-based and international NGO and women’s movement networks and to develop, cultivate and maintain strong relationships. 
• Act as a key spokesperson for Womankind. 

MONITORING, EVALUATION AND LEARNING 

• Oversee the organisation’s learning, monitoring and evaluation processes to ensure programmes and grant making are delivering meaningful, feminist change.
• Lead development of innovative approaches to learning, feminist evidence-building, and impact measurement. 
• Work closely with colleagues to facilitate the exchange and sharing of learning with partners, peers and other stakeholders. 
• Measure and report regularly on performance against strategic and operational plans to the co-CEOs and Board of Trustees. 

SAFEGUARDING AND RISK MANAGEMENT 

• Ensure safeguarding is embedded across Womankind’s grantmaking and programmes, centering the safety, dignity and agency of women, girls and gender-diverse people. 
• Work collaboratively with partners to develop feminist, context-specific safeguarding approaches, addressing risks in ways that are supportive and non-punitive. 
• Lead safeguarding risk management within the grantmaking portfolio, ensuring compliance with organisational policies and legal requirements, and fostering a culture of care and accountability. 
• Build safeguarding capacity across the team and partners and contribute to wider learning on decolonising safeguarding practices in philanthropy and development.

ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS 

• Significant senior leadership experience in working alongside feminist movements, women’s rights organisations, or allied social justice movements including demonstrable commitment to feminist analysis and practice. 
• Proven track record of designing, delivering and managing transformative programmes, partnerships, and/or grant-making initiatives that advance women’s rights and gender justice. 
• Experience in strategic leadership and organisational development within vision and values driven organisations. 
• Knowledge of decolonial, trust-based funding and partnership approaches including the development and management of flexible funding strategies. 
• Proven experience of developing proposals for institutional funders and large trusts and foundations. 
• Significant experience of managing, developing and motivating a team within a remote/hybrid working environment including strong people management skills, supporting staff wellbeing and performance management. 
• Experience of working within a Senior Management Team, operating at Board level. 
• Credible and effective external representative. 

ESSENTIAL SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES 

• Bold, strategic and curious thinker, with the courage to challenge injustice and shift power. 
• Collaborative leadership style that values inclusion, care and shared power. 
• Strong communication, influencing and networking skills. 
• Financial management skills, including oversight of programme and grant budgets. 
• Committed to feminist leadership, antiracism, and wellbeing-centred ways of working. 
• Ability and willingness to travel in Africa, Asia, the UK and internationally, approximately 4-6 weeks per year