Programme Officer, Private Foundations

About Us

MSI Reproductive Choices is one of the world’s leading providers of sexual and reproductive healthcare. We believe that everyone should have the right to choose. From contraception to safe abortion and life-saving post-abortion care, we are committed to delivering compassionate, affordable, high-quality services for all.

Today, our organisation has over 9,000 team members working in 37 countries across the world. Our success lies in the fact that MSI teams are locally led, entrepreneurial and results-driven, and are passionate about delivering high quality, client-centered care in their own communities. As a social business, we focus on sustainable delivery, efficiency, and funding models that are built to last, so that the women and girls we serve today will have a choice in the future too.

We know that access to reproductive choice is life changing. For some, it can mean the ability to complete an education or start a career. For others, it means being able to look after the family they already have. For everyone, it means the freedom to decide their own future, creating a fairer, more equal world.

About the Role

The Private Foundations team develops and stewards MSI’s relationships with core private foundation donors, ensuring effective oversight of foundation funds, building and maintaining excellent relationships with funders, driving programmatic excellence in line with strategic priorities and supporting country programmes to meet donor priorities. The Private Foundations team develops and stewards MSI’s relationships with three main foundations: the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and a Large Anonymous Donor (LAD). The team oversees the technical design and execution of investments from these three donors and is responsible for safeguarding and advancing MSI’s relationship with them as key contributors to achieving MSI’s mission. The team provides organizational leadership to ensure that MSI’s strategy, policy, systems and capacities are responsive to donor priorities and investments and that Foundations programming advances the MSI2030 strategy.

The Programme Officer will be responsible for coordinating and supporting two sub-teams (CIFF/BMGF and LAD) within the Foundations team working across these three key private foundations. Across those sub-teams there are several global programmes requiring support including:

• CIFF-funded multi-country project “Step-Up” (~70% Level of Effort). Step-Up is divided in two components: The first component (Step-Up 1) is a 2,5-year investment supporting seven country programmes in West and Central Africa to deliver last mile service delivery of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, shift social norms and support the transition to national ownership of SRH services. The second component (Step-Up 2) is a five-year flexible investment supporting MSI to deliver its 10-year MSI2030 strategy across several priorities including transition to public sector leadership, delivery to the last mile at scale, development of gender transformative approaches in MSI’s programming, strengthening local partnerships and expand home-based and digitally enabled models of care.
• BGMG project portfolio (~10% LoE) including a multi-country innovative digital programme taking place in francophone West Africa.
• LAD-funded strategic flexible funding (~20% LoE) across 15 countries in the global partnership supporting the delivery of MSI230 strategy.

Working closely with the Senior Programme Managers in charge of these projects and directly reporting to the CIFF/BMGF projects director, the Programme Officer will coordinate and support donor reporting obligations, country programme implementation and budget monitoring. In addition, this role will be key in supporting the preparation of external donor engagement meetings and events and coordinate the overarching ways of working within the Foundations team (best practice, harmonisation of tools etc.). This is an exciting and internally high-profile role that requires excellent financial analysis skills, strong communication skills, analytical and problem-solving skills, excellent ability to work across teams to deliver results, and great attention to detail.

About You

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission and a focus on delivering measurable results. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully. You must be open-minded, curious, resilient, and solutions-oriented, and committed to promoting equality, and safeguarding the welfare of team members and clients alike.

To succeed in this role, you must have:

• At least 2/3 years work experience at a comparable agency or organization essential (such as an international NGO, donor agency, or private foundation). Previous country programme implementation of large-scale programmes experience desirable.
• Proven experience in successfully supporting projects and coordinating teams
• Strong finance management experience including budgeting, budget tracking and analyzing financial performance.
• Proven experience working cross-team, generating consensus and support from multiple internal stakeholders, and leading people through complex processes.
• Understanding of the sexual and reproductive health and family planning fields desirable.
• Excellent verbal presentation skills including experience of presenting to external audiences, storytelling and pitching.
• Excellent written communication skills: ability to organise and present information in a compelling way to a range of audiences
• Able to influence to strengthen and improve quality and timeliness of programme deliverables, processes and technical support without direct line management or control
• Demonstrated ability to meet deadlines, perform under pressure and reputation for consistently delivering results to a high standard

Skills:

• Ability to work in a diverse and inclusive environment, respecting and collaborating with all individuals equally, and with a commitment to overcome bias and prejudice
• Accuracy and attention to detail; highly numerate and analytical.
• Strong communication skills in both English and French – written and verbal; diplomatic and able to manage sensitive information.
• Highly developed interpersonal skills, including cross-team negotiating and relationship building.
• Strong report writing skills in English
• Ability to manage multiple tasks in high-paced environment.
• Advanced Excel skills.

Education

• Educated to degree-level desirable, master’s degree optional.

Personal Attributes

We seek exceptional individuals who are aligned to MSI’s mission and entrepreneurial mindset. You must be a strong communicator, self-motivated and solutions-seeking, committed to driving social change in an environment that measures sustainable results and impact at an individual and global level. You must be able to work effectively with and across diverse teams and be comfortable with ambiguity.

• Committed to the protection of team members and clients, with a focus on vulnerable groups
• Able to role-model inclusive and culturally sensitive attitudes and behaviours
• Ability to manage a heavy and fluctuating workload. Results orientated
• Demonstrates MSI team member behaviours
• Pro MSI philosophy of social enterprise and cost recovery
• Ability to travel up to 12 weeks a year
• Pro choice

For more information about the role, please view the job description and person specification on our website.

Location: London Support Office, W1T or any country where MSI operates

Full-time: 35hrs a week (UK only)

Contract type: Fixed Term Contract – to 31/12/2023

Salary: £34,000 – £40,000 + benefits (UK salary range only) For applicants not based in the UK, the role will be banded within the national context

Closing date: 19th July 2022 (midnight GMT+1). Interviews may take place before this date for exceptional candidates.