Summary
Date Posted: Thursday, February 13 2025, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
The foundation of our approach is the Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP), where rural communities are led through regular facilitated meetings to organize, conceptualize and implement local development projects, which are supported by a microgrant to fund them. The FCAP has been designed to improve local livelihoods, enhance social cohesion, and improve citizen engagement.
Our operating model is based on an international team of functional advisers (e.g. finance team, training team, design team) who support country teams. Country teams co-design the FCAP with local partners and government, train partners, and support quality monitoring and oversight. The size and scope of country teams depend on the needs of our partners.

WHO YOU ARE
You are a seasoned professional with extensive experience in policy influence, partnership building, and driving large-scale program expansion. You are excited to join us at a pivotal moment in our growth as we focus on sector building, expanding into new regions, and forging high-impact partnerships. You will lead efforts to influence global partners, close evidence gaps, design, pilot and refine scalable models, and set the standard for high-quality CDD at scale. The ideal candidate will challenge traditional approaches to development, ensuring that Spark’s work remains accountable to the communities we serve while driving transformative change in the sector.

RESPONSIBILITIES
Reporting to the CEO, the Chief Innovation Officer is a key leadership role responsible for driving sector expansion, research and impact, and strategic growth at Spark MicroGrants. This position will lead efforts to accelerate the design and funding of new village grants and facilitation programs, collect the evidence for, develop and build a coalition for CDD standards, and drive Spark’s global expansion. The Chief Innovation Officer will also oversee research and strengthen program scalability and impact. As part of the leadership team, this role will guide organizational strategy, support leadership development, and manage senior staff to ensure impact and growth across Spark’s programs.

1. Sector building & expansion
Year one goal: Pilot and evaluate regional World Bank gatherings, explore pathways to scale and potential partnerships in Ghana. Evaluate potential for expansion and develop framework for World Bank partnership pathways.
Duties:
1. Develop and test pathways to influence World Bank and other partners to accelerate the design of new village grants and facilitation programs
2. Identify countries with potential for large-scale financing, develop partnerships and design and run pilots for national scale
3. Build momentum and support for CDD standards through hosting regional gatherings, coalition building, publicizing research, and supporting CDD standards

2. Research & Innovation
Year one goal: Consolidate current version of standards and identify learning questions, finalize “big push”research strategy and begin setting up evaluations to answer learning questions. Support national framework discussions in Rwanda and Malawi, oversee development of SROI framework, identify FCAP components to be tested/iterated on and run one pilot.
Duties:
1. Identify evidence gaps and learning questions, support researchers to set up studies, and feed results into standards, program design and key conversations with partners and coalitions
2. Develop evidence-supported CDD standards that drive sector-building as well as Spark’s programmatic expansion
3. Provide design support to newly financed external CDD programs, new country pilots and development of national scale frameworks
4. Own FCAP SROI and collaborate with Spark’s program teams to design and test model innovations to increase SROI at scale

3. Strategy & leadership
Year one goal: Lead Y1 review of Spark’s 2025-2027 OKRs, support leadership building
Duties:
1. Lead strategic planning process across the organization
2. Support organizational growth as proactive member of Spark’s senior leadership team (e.g. building leadership team, hiring of new leaders, mentoring and growing internal leaders, developing effective ways of working)
3. Direct line management of and support to senior staff to lead their teams successfully

REQUIREMENTS:
Qualifications, experience & skills:
• 10+ years experience in Africa of scaling evidence-based programs, growing government-led, NGO supported programming, with 5+ years in senior leadership.
• Experience with community-driven development programs.
• Demonstrated success in running complex government partnerships in multiple countries.
• Expertise in managing relationships with large multilateral agencies, specifically the World Bank.
• Strong research experience including fluency in impact evaluations and data-driven decision-making.
• Understanding of government financial systems and history of clean audits on programs managed previously.
• Excellent track record in designing and managing rural development programs.
• Strong project management skills and attention to detail are required.
• Excellent English written and oral communication.

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 120

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

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