Senior Manager, Financial Planning and Operations

ABOUT SPARK MICROGRANTS

Spark MicroGrants believes in a world where everyone lives with dignity and determines their own positive future. Spark has worked in 1000+ villages in 6 countries and has pioneered a community-driven development model in sub-Saharan Africa. Spark works with NGO and Government partners to scale the model's adoption and impact on rural communities - on their own terms. Our model combines facilitated community meetings with a small, discretionary grant to catalyze local action and institution building. Read more about our Approach, Impact and Values on our website.
OVERVIEW

The Senior Manager, Financial Planning and Operations will bridge the gap between high-level vision for new partnerships and funding relationships and the creation of realistic budgets, reports and financial narratives that meet donor needs and clearly communicate the relationship between outcomes and funding. They will have deep experience in financial analysis, reporting, systems and tools, and are equally comfortable estimating high level information and building detailed models to support financial analysis and decision making. This role is an individual contributor and is a hands-on producer of value-added financial analysis, modeling, and reporting, and will report directly to the CFO. The incumbent will collaborate with senior leadership, and work extensively with the fundraising team on donor and Board deliverables and on helping the organization and its stakeholders understand the financial impacts of new projects and partnerships.

They will also lead enterprise functions including risk management and cash forecasting, and lead key aspects of financial operations on behalf of the CFO. They will implement effective tracking and monitoring of Global and US operations OKRs, metrics and customer deliverables, and ensure appropriate follow-up and communication with stakeholders.

Due to the amount of coordination with the fundraising team they will need to be based in the US and available on US East Coast time schedules, as well as being available to meet with teammates in Africa during cross-over time zones.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Financial reporting, analysis and scenario modeling in support of fundraising

- Model the cost of new projects, programs and partnerships and build repeatable tools and processes to increase the efficiency of generating external-facing budgets.

- Own financial processes for donor budgets, including templates, guidelines, metrics and analysis.

- Collaborate with program and functional teams to provide value added analysis and model future scenarios.

- Lead financial due diligence responses, and ensure adequate policies and practices are in place to satisfy key donor expectations and deliverables.

Annual Budget, forecasting, and actual versus budget analysis

- Forecast quarterly, annual and long term revenue and cash flows, and model alternative scenarios, in support of budgeting and strategic planning processes.

- Ensure effective and timely tracking of forecasted revenues, cash flows and donor restrictions.

- Provide financial guidance to global support functions, including Operations, Fundraising, Executive and Innovation teams, and execute the annual budget process together with these teams. They will also provide reporting and analysis in support of the monthly Budget vs Actual (BVA) process and quarterly forecasting updates.

.Financial support to the Innovation team on proposals, pilot projects and research

- Work with the Chief Innovation Officer to model new opportunities, and to provide budgeting, reporting and analysis of pilot projects.

- Support the implementation of new processes and systems required to accommodate new workstreams, and coordinate the hand-over of expanding programs to the core finance team.

- Provide financial support for Social Return on Investment calculations and other financial metrics that aid decision making on where to allocate resources.

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