Institutional Funding Coordinator at Ol Pejeta Conservancy (OPC)

Role Summary:

The Institutional Funding Coordinator will be responsible for coordinating Ol Pejeta’s institutional fundraising initiatives, enabling the Conservancy to secure funds from institutions, large trusts and foundations and selected corporate partners. The role will support the Fundraising team with institutional donor mapping and analysis, networking, and partner/donor engagement across Laikipia and in Nairobi. They will play a key role in coordinating and contributing to proposal development and facilitating engagement between fundraising and programme teams. The role will be critical in enabling Ol Pejeta’s efforts to translate opportunities to secure grants and income through the development of the highest quality prospect research and proposals.

Responsibilities:
Culture and behavioral responsibilities

• Build strong relationships with key stakeholders within the organization across teams and departments to understand and effectively translate programming priorities into fundable projects and programmes.
• Support team administration, including database management (Salesforce) and filing of key documents.
• Coordinate processes that enable cross-organizational working, including participating and supporting processes designed to improve OPC’s standard operating protocols for programme
• funding throughout the project cycle, in close collaboration with the Project Implementation team.
• Attend team and department meetings and contribute to departmental planning processes.

 Fundraising responsibilities - Pipeline Development

• Undertake ongoing donor mapping and analysis - aligning organizational priorities to those of donors (large Trusts and Foundations, Institutions and selected corporate partners).
• Track funding opportunities in the pipeline, provide analysis in a standard format to enable go/no go decision making, and identify opportunities for senior OPC staff to engage with donors formulating new funding modalities that align with OPC’s programme goals. 
• Lead annual contact/network mapping exercises to identify connections between identified prospects and Ol Pejeta leadership and other staff, or other core partners of the Conservancy that might be leveraged as part of a funding approach.

 Fundraising Responsibilities - Proposal Development

• Coordinate proposal development processes – developing proposal development plans, coordinating application admin, facilitating project design discussions with colleagues.
• Work in collaboration with the rest of the Programme Funding team to write quality proposals that secure multi-year funding.
• Develop and regularly update short project briefs on different aspects of OPC’s work to be shared with prospective donors.

Partnerships and Representation

• Identify and support the cultivation of new partnerships that position Ol Pejeta for new funding opportunities, either as the lead, or a partner within consortium bids.
• Support the management of existing partnerships in Kenya to identify new opportunities for collaboration, ensuring the best interests of Ol Pejeta are represented.
• Identify and engage in networks or platforms utilized by large trusts, foundations, selected corporate and institutional donors to raise our visibility among these donor groups.

Reporting and compliance

• Provide input to technical and financial reports to ensure grants are being reported against to the very highest standards and help ensure that donors are made aware of progress in a timely and accurate manner.
• Work with the programme’s teams and Ol Pejeta’s Legal Coordinator to manage the compliance
• monitoring tool and provide technical support where necessary to ensure that the Conservancy always remains fully compliant.

Qualifications and Skills:

 Qualification

• Bachelor’s degree or similar qualification in Conservation, Natural Resource Management or related discipline.
• Excellent verbal and written communication with fluency in English.

Experience

• Demonstrable experience raising funds from a wide range of donors, including trusts and foundations, corporates, and government donors, such as USAID, UK Government, EU etc.
• Experience in facilitating project design processes
• Experience in proposal writing and coordinating proposal development processes
• Working knowledge of Customer relationship management (CRM) databases (Salesforce),
• Microsoft 365 and Google productivity apps.

 Skills

• Detail oriented with excellent organizational, critical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Ability to thrive in a high paced, fast turnaround business
• Be positive, motivated, ambitious, and proactive, with a “can-do” attitude
• Adaptable – ability to respond quickly to a shifting reality and adjust initiatives and priorities accordingly
• Great interpersonal, communication and collaboration skills
• Good spoken and written English is a must for this position