SENIOR MANAGER, PARTNER FUNDING SUPPORT

your mission

Maliasili is a dynamic and innovative organization that is taking a different approach to drive locally-led conservation impact in Africa. We find the best local African conservation organizations and make them better by strengthening their organizational performance, leadership, and resourcing so that they can achieve greater impact. Our partner portfolio includes outstanding local and national organizations at the forefront of wildlife conservation, land restoration, and coastal fisheries. Our partners are pioneering conservation approaches grounded in community and indigenous land rights, generating economic opportunities from nature-based businesses, and restoring ecosystems across many of Africa’s most important landscapes.

Since its founding over a decade ago, Maliasili has built a portfolio of roughly 55 partners working across over 64 million hectares of critical landscapes and ecosystems in seventeen countries. We have helped our partners generate or leverage more than $27.3 million in funding for their work, developed a growing set of tools to help improve their organizational performance, and supported many of our partners to grow their impacts in the field significantly. Our goals are to build a portfolio of Africa’s best local conservation organizations, help them collaborate and learn from each other, and scale up their community-based conservation work on the ground and their leadership capacity within the conservation field.

your profile

Role Summary

The Senior Manager, Partner Funding, leads three connected strands of collective action and fundraising work. The first is building the methodologies, tools, and training that strengthen Maliasili’s and the Portfolio team's ability to support partners' resource mobilization. The second, equally central, is working directly with partners themselves: troubleshooting fundraising challenges as they arise, designing and facilitating cluster fundraising workshops, and helping partners build robust, realistic fundraising plans. The third is supporting Maliasili's and partners’ donor engagement work, including furthering donor relationships and Vuma Fund positioning, supporting the border shift to “better money” for community-led conservation. Working closely with Communications, Portfolio, and FAD, the Senior Manager also ensures that fundraising methodology and funding-pipeline thinking show up in how partners are supported to communicate and pursue funding, not just in internal tools and guides.

Working under the strategic direction of the Director, Collective Action and Funding, the Senior Manager operates with high levels of autonomy, exercising independent judgment in methodology design, training delivery, direct partner engagement, and select donor relationships. This is a developmental leadership role: as the Senior Manager's capability and tenure grow, the role is expected to progressively take on elements of strategic representation and support for the Director.

Strategic Context

This role supports Goal 3: Improving and Increasing Funding by leading the tools, training, and internal systems that help Portfolio Managers and partners access more and better funding. The Senior Manager will take on some strategic-support responsibilities

Responsibilities

Fundraising Methodology & Tools (20%)

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Lead the development and codification of fundraising methodologies, tools, and practical guides for the Portfolio team and partners

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Own the fundraising resource library and its integration into the Wezesha Hub and other knowledge-sharing platforms

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Set the improvement agenda for methodology and tools based on Portfolio and partner feedback

Portfolio Manager Support and Strengthening (25%)

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Design and deliver materials and support that strengthen Portfolio Managers' ability to diagnose and support partner fundraising needs

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Establish and manage a regular cadence of fundraising clinics, office hours, and strategy sessions with the Po