Director Community and Field Building

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.
WHO YOU ARE
The Director, Community & Field Building will help build the ecosystem needed to move decision-making and capital closer to communities at unprecedented scale.
The role has three interconnected ambitions:
Build a cohort of champions who believe in community-driven governance and can influence how public, philanthropic, and multilateral resources are designed and deployed.
Raise a $100M fund to support village grants, facilitation, innovation, learning, and the development of excellent community-led systems.
Help move $20 billion in public and multilateral financing toward the world’s poorest villages by building the relationships, evidence, partnerships, and field infrastructure needed to make this possible.
This is a highly entrepreneurial role. The Director will help define the field, identify the people and organizations who should be part of it, create compelling opportunities for collaboration and investment, and turn a compelling idea into a growing community of practice.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Build a global community of practice
Identify and connect exceptional organizations, practitioners, researchers, funders, and public leaders working to put power and capital closer to communities.
You will:
Map the global landscape of community-driven development, participatory governance, locally led development, and related approaches.
Identify exceptional organizations and individuals who are advancing the field.
Build relationships and create opportunities for practitioners to learn from one another.
Develop forums, partnerships, convenings, and other mechanisms for shared learning and collaboration.
Help practitioners develop shared standards, tools, and approaches for excellent community-led systems.
Identify emerging ideas, evidence, and innovations that could strengthen the field.
Help articulate what excellent community-driven development looks like and where the field needs to advance.
Build a community of champions and capital
Build a core group of philanthropists, public leaders, researchers, institutions, and other influential actors who can fund, champion, and help advance community-driven approaches.
You will:
Develop a compelling proposition for philanthropy and institutional partners around community-driven development.
Build and manage relationships with high-level philanthropic, public, multilateral, and research partners.
Identify opportunities where private capital can help unlock significantly larger pools of public and multilateral financing.
Create opportunities for funders and partners to learn directly from communities and practitioners.
Develop strategic partnerships that increase the visibility, credibility, and adoption of community-led approaches.
Build a network of champions who can advocate for greater community decision-making and resource allocation within their own institutions and networks.
Build a $100M fund
Lead the development and fundraising strategy for a major fund supporting village grants, facilitation, learning, innovation, and the broader infrastructure required for excellent community-led development.
You will:
Develop the fund's proposition, strategy, and fundraising narrative.
Identify and cultivate major philanthropic and institutional funders.
Build a pipeline of high-value funding opportunities and strategic partnerships.
Lead or support major donor conversations, proposals, pitches, and partnership negotiations.
Develop a compelling case for why philanthropic capital can play a catalytic role in unlocking significantly larger public and multilateral financing.
Work closely with Spark's Growth and leadership teams to convert relationships and opportunities into funding.
Help shape how the fund can generate learning, evidence, and infrastructure that benefit the broader field.
Help unlock $20B in public and multilateral financing
Work across Spark and its external network to help create the conditions for governments and multilateral institutions to direct significantly more resources toward community-led systems.
You will:
Build relationships with senior government, multilateral, philanthropic, and development-finance leaders.
Identify opportunities to influence large-scale financing mechanisms and programs.
Connect evidence and lessons from Spark's work to broader policy and financing conversations.
Work with Spark's Global Programs and Innovation teams to translate field learning into compelling propositions for governments and multilateral institutions.
Identify strategic partnerships that could accelerate adoption of community-led approaches at national and international scale.
Help build the narrative, evidence, and coalition necessary to make community-driven financing a mainstream approach.
Build Spark's field-building capacity

Employment type
Full-Time

Work arrangement
Yes