Job Opportunities at One Acre Fund

Job Description

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 true passion for writing, and in particular 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 proposals and reports for smaller grants, but quickly move into the $500,000+ gift range. Beyond the scope of writing, this role will also provide support in our donor relations management process, working directly alongside account leads to ensure that our donor relationships remain close, consistent, and mutually beneficial.

Specific Responsibilities Include, But Are Not Limited To

• Write concept notes and proposals for grants. Some key characteristics of our writing:
  
  • We tailor our language to each new funder. Most of our funders are quite sophisticated, which keeps our proposal-writing dynamic and our work interesting.
  • We emphasize clear logical flow in our writing, and make heavy use of hard M&E results and projections, business rationale, and a farmer-facing perspective
  • We often prepare for our writing with significant research and outreach to One Acre Fund’s field teams; an ideal candidate would be a skilled and enthusiastic researcher.
• 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.
• 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.
• Organize and execute complex projects. Our team does not have a top-down culture. We would like to hire someone who can independently drive forward execution of complex and multi-stage writing projects, with the support and input of colleagues and team leadership. This person should expect to fully own the role.

Career Growth and Development

We have a strong culture of constant learning and we invest in developing our people. You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentorship and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance. We hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your aspirations and career goals. You’ll have the opportunity to shape a growing organization and build a rewarding long-term career.

Qualifications

We are seeking an exceptional professional with 3 - 5+ years of work experience, and a demonstrated long-term interest international development. We are looking for truly extraordinary candidates that will help take our organization to a new level of impact and scale. Specific qualifications include, but are not limited to:

• Required: Either substantial field experience or 1+ year of professional writing experience in a related field. Ideally both!
• Very strong communication skills. At its core, this position is about communicating complex ideas in simple prose. We are looking for candidates who derive great satisfaction from this act, and can demonstrate their ability to do so – in short, we are seeking writers. 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 working every day to positively impact 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 their ins and outs simply and effectively.
• Skill in graphic design/desktop publishing is also a 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: High level of English fluency required

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Compensation

Commensurate with experience

Duration

Full-time job

Benefits

Health insurance, paid time off

Sponsor International Candidates

No; Must have existing rights to work in East Africa, the Netherlands or United States of America. East Africans strongly encouraged to apply.

One Acre Fund never asks candidates to pay any money or pay for tests at any stage of the interview process. Official One Acre Fund emails will always arrive from an @oneacrefund.org address. Please report any suspicious communication here.

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Job Description

The Overarching Goals Of This Role Are To

• Drive waste out of the value chain through a set of focused, high-impact projects and process improvements
• Deliver better system and data integrations across the supply chain team from demand planning to purchasing to inventory management
• Improve controls environment to prevent and detect over-spend events and fraud
• Work with the Supply Chain Operations Manager to improve order accuracy to dramatically reduce excess inventory without risking stock-outs
• Make team key performance indicators visible to executors and organization leadership to justify investments in supply chain operations

The Supply Chain Operations Associate/manager will design and implement processes, systems, and data-integration tools that will work at scale. S/he will deliver results on a set of high impact projects designed to drive increased efficiency and eliminate waste across our supply chain operations, drive cost savings for farmers, and prepare our systems to work as One Acre Fund scales to deliver a broader mix of products to more clients across a larger geography. Success in this role means supporting the sourcing team to deliver goods more effectively and efficiently, thereby driving organization-wide sustainability.

This position could be hired at two different levels depending on experience and interview performance:

The Supply Chain Operations Associate will play a critical role supporting the development and implementation of major cost saving and efficiency improving initiatives with a heavy focus on process automation, reducing redundancies, and better use of data. The ideal candidate has 3+ years of work experience in an operations or strategic problem-solving role, with significant exposure to complex project management, process automation, and forecasting.

The Supply Chain Operations Manager will take ownership over identifying innovative, scalable solutions to drive efficiency across the sourcing team with the goal of saving over $1M each year. S/he will be responsible for proactively identifying challenges across the function, building relationships with key stakeholders to gain insights that will help drive effective, long-term solutions, and implementing these solutions independently. The ideal candidate has 5+ years of management experience in an operations or strategic problem-solving role, with significant exposure to complex project management, people management, business strategy, and process improvement work.

Key Responsibilities Of Both Roles May Include

• Driving innovation in sourcing operations to eliminate waste: Drive innovation across the global sourcing team by executing strategic projects and thinking creatively. Example projects include:
  
  • Create and execute a strategy for handling excess inventory between seasons
  • Invest in data-driven forecasting and new warehousing and sourcing strategies to minimize excess inventory in regional warehouses without risking stock-outs during key seasonal deliveries
  • Investigate projects that could save massive amounts of money such as central warehousing to reduce local warehousing costs
  • Design risk mitigation strategies in partnership with product and policy team to insulate farmers from input availability issues
  • Identifying other methods for reducing repetition, spend, and manual movements from sourcing processes – may include collaborating with warehousing, last-mile-distribution, and finance teams in addition to immediate global sourcing colleagues

• Improve system integration:

• Streamline order processing and tracking tools to reduce repetition and manual data entry
• Move cash forecasting process into SAP with support from Global Sourcing Manager
• Design and create PowerBI reports to give greater data visibility on key performance indicators to sourcing team and 1AF leadership – will also require setting up data inputs for ease of reporting

• Tighten controls environment:
  
  • Update and manage the full set of team-wide SOPs for improved knowledge transfer and new staff onboarding
  • Identify and close controls gaps in sourcing processes with buy-in from team leadership and executors to reduce possible fraud or over-spend events
  • Run fraud prevention trainings
  • Report on controls to systems and organizational leadership

• Capacity building:
  
  • Learn systems and processes across sourcing units in order to fill mission-critical gaps as needed
  • Run capacity building workshops and trainings across the Sourcing team focused on hard skills (i.e. Microsoft suite, data presentation skills, writing for clarity, etc.)
  • Work with sourcing managers to evaluate hard-skills gaps on their team required for proper succession planning and design training courses to help staff across the sourcing team master those skills
  • Identify strong talent pools to support with recruitment at all job grades

Career Growth and Development

We have a strong culture of constant learning and we invest in developing our people. You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentorship and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance. We hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your aspirations and career goals. You’ll have the opportunity to shape a growing organization and build a rewarding long-term career.

Qualifications

We are seeking exceptional candidates with 3-7 years or work experience, top performing academic background, and a passion for reducing waste across supply chain operations. Prior operations or consulting experience preferred but not required if the candidate has a track record of independent problem solving and innovation in a fast growing organization. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Passion for operations, building scalable and efficient systems and solving problems in a difficult operating environment
• Work experience in a demanding professional environment, preferably in positions where frequent cross-department communication was required
• Experience in an operations, consulting, manufacturing, or supply chain role preferred
• Track record of independent problem solving and delivering results
• Strong data and analytical skills; advanced Excel a plus
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Experience working in a multi-cultural workplace
• Creativity and strong problem solving skills. You don’t take no for an answer and constantly look for alternative solutions to problems.
• Strong attention to detail – you can pick out a mistake in a contract from a mile away
• Strong quantitative reasoning skills – you can QC contracts, POs, and orders effectively without support
• Professional maturity and ability to stay calm under stress
• A passion for world class customer service
• Proven ability to set and meet targets
• Strong work ethic and ability to handle a demanding, high pressure work environment
• Strong sense of ethics, honesty, and integrity
• Leadership experience at work or outside of work.
• Top-performing academic background
• Language: English required, French and Swahili preferred

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Compensation

Commensurate with experience.

Benefits

Health insurance, housing, annual flights and other quality of life benefits.

Sponsor International Candidates

Yes. East Africans are strongly encouraged to apply.

One Acre Fund never asks candidates to pay any money or pay for tests at any stage of the interview process. Official One Acre Fund emails will always arrive from an @oneacrefund.org address. Please report any suspicious communication here.