Director of Learning and Evaluation At Global Fund for Children

Department: Programs

Employment Type: Full-time

Reports to: VP, Programs

Compensation: For US-Based, the salary range is $100,000 to $110,000 dependent on level of experience: international hires will be benchmarked dependent on location, available benefits, and experience

Location: Washington, DC, or London preferred; remote global may be considered

Language: English

Deadline for applications: Open until filled

To complete application, visit https://global-fund-for-children.breezy.hr/p/5955337cf53a and click “Apply To Position”

Do you want to ignite the potential of children and youth to transform the world? Do you believe in grassroots NGOs as visionary change-makers?

You will join a global team of caring and committed individuals who believe in investing in bold ideas to help grassroots organizations deepen their impact and advocate for children’s rights. We value partnership, learning, excellence, kindness, and our partners’ visions for change inspire all we do. Feedback and learning motivate us to do better, and we strive to be youth-centered.

How does it all work?

Global Fund for Children invests in grassroots organizations that improve the lives of children and youth challenged by poverty, injustice, and discrimination. We provide flexible grants and help our partners strengthen their organizational capacity to realize their goals and dreams. We are committed to advancing the rights of children and youth, and we fund organizations that are tackling issues in education, gender justice, migration, and more. We also have several participatory initiatives to extend decision-making power to young people and others who represent community perspectives. We seek to boost the collective efforts of our partners to influence transformative change and mobilize networks, and we encourage our partners to learn from each other.

What will you be doing?

You will join the GFC team at an important time as we continue to strengthen the Learning and Evaluation unit within our Programs department. You appreciate the dynamics of being a funder that helps to catalyze change but does not fund organizations to implement specific projects in their communities. Articulating what “impact” and change look like in this context requires a creative, nuanced approach, and a desire to contest conventional norms in monitoring and evaluation.

You will support organizational learning and play a leadership role in knowledge generation and synthesis as evaluation and learning should inform planning and decision-making across the organization. You will support proposal development for funders, learning frameworks and evaluation activities of regional and thematic-specific initiatives, sometimes working with external consultants, while bringing insight together in a cohesive way that advances GFC’s global organizational learning. You will also build relationships with peers and allies and contribute to field developments around learning and evaluation in the context of a power-aware, trust-based philanthropy perspective.

You are enthusiastic about mentoring a team and cultivating learning champions in the organization and will manage a team of two officers based on the West and East coasts of the US. You will report to the Vice President of Programs located in Washington, DC.

Key Responsibilities:

• Shape GFC’s long-term evaluation and learning direction and develop appropriate evaluation and learning methodologies.
• Play a key role to help GFC to learn from and demonstrate the impact of our work including contributing to learning processes for initiatives around the world that engage in topics such as migration, climate justice, gender, equitable education and much more.
• Build strong relationships with key stakeholders such as the CEO, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Regional Directors, Senior Leadership team, and members of the Board of Directors.
• Guide the development of research on social justice issues in collaboration with community-based partners and young people.
• Provide technical input on funding proposals, learning and evaluation frameworks and approaches, data collection tools, and protocols for our work with community-based organizations globally.
• Get in the details as needed to aggregate and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data to draw key lessons learned from partner data, learning reviews, and research projects.
• Communicate findings of research studies and learning reviews in creative ways to GFC, peers, grantee partners, and other audiences, producing reports, presentations, and other materials, and mentor colleagues to synthesize, analyze, and share learnings.

Are you the right person?

Must show initiative, self-motivation, and ability to adapt quickly and easily to changing organizational needs. Demonstrated ability to proactively identify issues/problems and recommend solutions.

You will bring strong analytical, strategic, collaboration, and leadership skills to bear in contributing to building a learning organization that embraces continuous improvement. You bring an activist mindset, combining an understanding of the role of trust-based philanthropy in the social sector with a passion for flexible and creative approaches and an eagerness to challenge, rather than replicate disempowering norms within the field of monitoring and evaluation. You will have honed skills in qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods and a demonstrated ability to create and implement new learning and evaluation approaches, especially in areas such as participatory evaluation and qualitative methods. You are eager to contribute at both the strategic and tactical levels with excellent critical thinking skills and the ability to take a broad perspective in the analysis of information.

Ideally you have at least 10 years of research and evaluation experience in the social sector with a focus on social change and grassroots activism. You are a clear, concise communicator in spoken and written English, including solid presentation and facilitation skills with a knack for making complex issues understandable and relevant to lay audiences. You show initiative to identify issues and recommend solutions, self-motivation, and ability to adapt quickly and easily to changing organizational needs.

You have strong planning and organizational skills with high attention to detail, accuracy, and deadlines. Your strong diplomacy and interpersonal skills will help enable you to build collegial relationships with colleagues and peers from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds and with widely varying experience in learning and evaluation. You find joy in mentoring your direct reports and peers and are comfortable working with colleagues remotely.

Schedule and Location:

The position is not strongly tied to a specific geographic location, but the ideal candidate is in a time zone that would provide comfortable overlap with Pacific Standard and Eastern Standard time zones where your team is based. GFC maintains offices in Washington, DC, and London, with a flexible, hybrid work schedule, while more than half of our team is based remotely around the world. The role will include travel to/within the US and globally estimated at 10-15%. The weekly schedule is expected to average 40 hours per week. The successful candidate would start as soon as they are available.

How to apply:

If this sounds like a role that matches your skills, experience, and values, we would love to hear from you.

Instead of a traditional cover letter, please use our online application to 1) upload your Resume or CV and 2) answer the following questions: 1) What most excites you about this role? 2) What are examples of ways that an intermediary funder like GFC can demonstrate the impact of our work? 3) What would you like to see change in terms of how evaluation is currently carried out in the social sector?

To complete your application, visit https://global-fund-for-children.breezy.hr/p/5955337cf53a and click “Apply to Position.”

If you encounter an issue with the application form or require assistance, please contact us at careers@globalfundforchildren.org. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted, and applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until filled. GFC is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all team members.