Fundraising Officer at Grassroots Economics Foundation

Why work with us?

Grassroots Economics seeks to be a leader in Financial Technology with a unique product of Community Currency. You will learn a lot! You will have the chance to help marginalized communities excel and build business management capacity in others.

About The Team

Our small and growing team is highly committed, we share information and learn together. We are self-starters and passionately believe in community development. We do exchange visits between Mombasa and Nairobi and hold our annual strategy retreat at the coast. We entrust you with great responsibility and match this with freedom and space for ideas.

Over the last year, Grassroots Economics Foundation’s activities have grown a lot, with plans to exponentially scale in the next 12 months. Our Operations team enables and supports all field activities. As part of the core operations team, Fundraising is a key element in our growth and scaling strategy. This role is part of a cross-functional team of M&E, Program Management and Senior Leadership members and is directly responsible to translate GEF’s strategy into actionable fundraising campaigns.

About This Role

As the Fundraising Officer you will lead the way in designing, implementing and monitoring our diverse fundraising campaigns. You’ll work closely with the Senior Leadership Team as well as departmental Managers and develop extensive funding campaigns. You’ll also develop our CRM and conduct in depth donor research. In addition you communicate with partners and help find a home in various departments for volunteers.

Over time you will transform GEF’s fundraising capabilities through system design, tools, SOPs and implementation of research findings and CRM utilization.

You will begin this journey in Nairobi, but we expect that you will also duplicate your successes in Mombasa and any other regions GEF is active in.

What You Will Do

• System Building
  • Develop qualitative and quantitative reports for all fundraising programs
  • Create or update donor databases
  • Maintain records of donor information for future use
  • With the assistance of the tech team, develop a CRM based on WordPress. Joomla or any other easy to use CMS (CivicRM)
• Project Management
  • Direct or coordinate web-based fundraising activities, such as online auctions or donation websites
  • Develop fundraising activity plans that maximize participation or contributions and minimize costs
  • Analyze the performance of events and other fundraising activities for effectiveness and to identify areas where money can be saved
• Fundraising
  • Raise funds for our cause and regularly meet or surpass fundraising targets
  • Research potential donors to gain insight into needs, beliefs and donation habits to understand how to position our organization to them
  • Design or produce materials such as posters, Web sites, or newsletters to promote, market, or advertise fundraising events
  • Compile or develop materials to submit to granting or other funding organizations
  • Leverage technology and social media where possible to improve fundraising activities
  • Develop and write complex grant proposals
• Volunteer, Intern and Student Management
  • Create volunteer attraction programs
  • Maintain volunteer communication
  • Assist Hiring Managers with volunteer selection process

Your deliverables will include

• Develop a donor, intern, volunteer, student, grantor & investor CRM
• Develop Excel models
• Preparation of weekly, monthly and quarterly reports based and in alignment with defined OKRs and KPIs
• Create any other reports on demand by M&E Manager  and SLT
• Create fundraising materials
• Monitoring our fundraising plans, progression and goals
• Maintain donor communication

What You Should Have

Strong passion for progress in low-income areas and empathy to relate with small business owners and the community. You are interested in the larger questions of building economies, livelihoods, collateral, lending and credit questions. Excited to get on the ground, roll up your sleeves and work with our team to figure out what needs to be done to scale GEF.

You Should Bring To The Table:

• Bachelor’s Degree
• A qualification or experience in B2B marketing, media or business may also be helpful.
• Minimum of five years fundraising, grant proposal writing and B2B marketing  experience for large East Africa based organizations with sizeable field operations
• Experience operating in bottom-of-the-pyramid environments in urban slums and rural areas
• Solid ICT skills with PM & CRM, CMS tools and software
• Experience with Agile, Scrum & Kanban style PM

If You Also Have…..

• Certified Fundraising Executive certification
• MBA
• Lean Six Sigma Certification
• Team management
• Training experience
• it would present you with an unique edge in this recruiting process.

In Addition, You Are

Energetic, enthusiastic, flexible & self-motivated to do what is necessary to get the job done. Comfortable working in a startup culture that is dynamic, unstructured, and frequently changing with ambitious international expansion plans. Self-directed and intellectually curious, seeking feedback in the pursuit of continuous improvement. A collaborative problem solver who seeks the opinions of other teammates and departments in the development of creative and sustainable solutions, and able to work independently with minimum supervision

What We Expect

You will be based in Nairobi and work from our main office. You will visit our community operations frequently and interact with CC members. Occasional travel to visit the Mombasa project sites will be scheduled as needed.

You will work closely with the Chief Operations Officer who is also based in Nairobi. And work closely with the operations team on collaborative projects.