Database Specialist, BMGF Design & Development of Local Partner Identification Platform for Africa At Social Impact

Social Impact is a global development management consulting firm. We provide monitoring, evaluation, strategic planning, and capacity building services to advance development effectiveness. We work across all development sectors including democracy and governance, health and education, the environment, and economic growth. Since 1997 we have worked in over 100 countries for clients such as US government agencies, bilateral donors, multilateral development banks, foundations, and nonprofits.

Proposal Objective:

Social Impact is bidding on a project with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s (BMGF) Africa team to help develop a cross-foundation platform for internal investment owners (IOs) and staff to identify local partners/grantees on the sub-continent. Various teams within BMGF have conducted landscaping exercises of recent to help identify partners based in the countries and communities served by the foundation. These exercises seek to reduce information asymmetries and provide visibility to local partners that may have worked to some extent with the foundation but could play a larger role over time, or that are completely new to working with the foundation but could help with achieving programmatic objectives.

The assignment would require Social Impact to collate recent landscaping exercises, build on these to create a segmentation of the types of partners with whom BMGF (or “the foundation”) works, and create a registry or catalog of local partners that BMGF could engage (either existing partners, nascent partners, or wholly new partners). This registry/catalog will then be converted to a living database or platform, with the intent that BMGF staff/IOs can use this tool to help identify local partners as they make their grants. Working with the BMGF IT and Knowledge Management (KM) teams, the platform and underlying data will be structured to facilitate integration with BMGF IT systems as “enterprise data” over time. The project will be divided into five phases:

• Phase 1: Scoping, user needs, and early prototypes.
• Phase 2: Landscape & compile.
• Phase 3: Look books, playbooks, and gap analysis.
• Phase 4: Dashboard development.
• Phase 5: Dissemination and maintenance.

Position Description:

Social Impact is seeking a Database Specialist to assist with developing a database for BMGF and working with BMGF IT team to integrate a usable dashboard into its knowledge management systems. The Database Specialist will report to the SI HQ Project Director and Project Manager, communicating with them regularly to ensure progress towards completion of client deliverables. This is a fully remote, part-time consultancy from January to July 2022.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct desk review and interviews with BMGF investment owners as well as key donor partners to better understand needs and opportunities.
• Assist with compiling a catalog of current/potential local partners of relevance to BMGF, based on scoping in Phase 1 and agreed upon approach and definition for local partners.
• Help to develop “look books” with more detailed profiles on especially promising new grantees and develop “playbook” to guide BMGF IOs to guide decision making on how to engage with new/nascent local partners .
• Conduct a gap analysis to provide insights on any observable gaps and trends identified through the landscaping exercise that are relevant for BMGF (e.g., observed gaps/capacity building priorities, observations on key geographies, descriptive statistics derived from landscape database etc.).
• Migrate the registry and Look Book profiles onto a readily accessible and user-friendly platform/dashboard for BMGF staff.
• Work with the BMGF IT/KM to ensure data is structured in a manner that lends itself to integration into BMGF systems as enterprise data over time (e.g., Salesforce, PowerBI dashboard, combination of them).
• Propose options for how to maintain and build on the registry over time, recommendations for how to maximize its internal/external utility, and propose metrics for tracking use/efficacy of tool.

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in information technology, computer science, or a similar degree with six years of relevant experience; OR a bachelor’s degree with eight years of relevant experience.
• Demonstrated experience designing, developing, and implementing online registries, platforms, and/or dashboards and partnering with IT teams to integrate them into existing systems.
• Strong familiarity with Power BI, Salesforce, and relevant databases.
• Consulting mindset with the ability to make recommendations to clients with viable solutions.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
• Ability to analyze, synthesize and present information for client stakeholders.
• Previous experience working with BMGF or other foundations.
• Regional experience working in African countries preferred.