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ABOUT SPARK MICROGRANTS

Spark Microgrants believes in a world where everyone lives with dignity and determines their own positive future. Spark has pioneered a poverty alleviation model in East Africa that draws on evidence from ultra poor graduation and community-driven development approaches, known as the facilitated collective action process (FCAP). The FCAP combines a cash grant plus facilitated community meetings and trainings to catalyze improved livelihoods, stronger social cohesion, and greater gender equity. Spark is partnering with NGO and Government partners to scale adoption and impacts for rural communities - on their own terms. Read more about our Approach, Impact and Values on our website.

In the past, the community-driven development (CDD) sector has unfortunately borne the brunt of evaluations claiming that CDD "does not work." Some of these evaluations used small samples, low quality data, loose definitions of CDD or accepted tokenistic participation in place of true community ownership. However, recent literature suggests that CDD actually provides a low cost, high impact model for development when delivered at high quality, and is effective at building on social capital for sustained long-term gains. The model is promising for deploying aid capital with accountability, inclusion, and in a truly localized manner that skips the “middle men” of traditional aid. Of course, gaps persist in the literature, including how best to structure facilitation alongside grants, understanding causal links with climate resiliency and gender equity, among others. Spark is uniquely positioned to elevate both the CDD and broader poverty alleviation sectors by rigorously testing the FCAP model, contributing to CDD implementation standards, establishing and disseminating evidence on accountable financing mechanisms, and partnering with governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies to scale up this cost-effective approach.

Spark is seeking an impact-driven leader to elevate our research and evaluation strategy such that it contributes to key sectoral information gaps, while providing some oversight to our monitoring and evaluation systems. This is a strategic, senior level role that will provide international technical expertise as well as excellent management and mentoring. Key responsibilities are setting the organization’s evaluation strategy, generating rigorous impact evidence through internal and external evaluations, developing and maintaining strong evidence-program-policy linkages, and strengthening the feedback loop between the body of literature and Spark’s program design. Spark’s funding and programs are readily positioned for a number of research studies.

OUR WORK

Spark currently operates in five countries in partnership with governments and nonprofits. We aim to reach national scale in Rwanda and Malawi in the next 2-3 years, guided by evidence and suited to local context. Committed to taking an evidence-driven approach, we are evaluating a pilot in Malawi while also planning a randomized controlled trial in Malawi, and have two external impact evaluations ongoing in Rwanda. We are planning one external evaluation in Uganda, and have several recent or ongoing external learning studies examining topics such as how to build communities’ climate resiliency through the FCAP; how to determine optimal seed grant sizes across the many contexts in which we work; how to develop a technology-led delivery of the FCAP that drives further impact with greater cost-efficiency; and more. We have a strong M&E team, robust monitoring data, and dashboards to support our evaluation strategy and reinforce continuous data-driven decision making, contributing to success on the path to national scale in multiple countries.

WHO YOU ARE

You are a seasoned leader with significant expertise in impact evaluation, program monitoring, passion for leveraging technology, and an interest in making research accessible to the layperson. You thrive in bringing order to chaos, understanding a variety of stakeholders, requirements and priorities and bringing them all together into coherent and systematic processes for delivery. You enjoy leading a team with ambitious ideas and you gain energy from turning those ideas into reality. You are a thinker, a clear communicator, understanding differing styles and backgrounds and you bring things up to your colleagues proactively that need to be discussed.

You will be part of the leadership team and will head the Impact department. You will own Spark’s research docket and actively contribute to external partner relationships. You will directly manage a team of full-time staff as well as consultants and large research contracts compliant with World Bank, USAID and other large donors’ procurement guidelines.

The right candidate will not want to do ‘development as usual’ but question how aid works and ensure that Spark’s program is ultimately accountable to the villages we serve. The Research and Impact Director will continue establishing a culture of learning and evidence-based decision-making within Spark and our partners.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Leadership & Management

• Champion a culture of feedback, learning and iteration to ensure Spark’s systems continue to improve, and feed into program decisions.
• Drive research and evaluation strategy to contribute to Spark’s goals, program growth, and the elevation of the CDD sector.
• Manage, develop and retain the team, setting clear responsibility domains, deliverables, growth opportunities, and support to achieve their goals as well as department / organization goals
• Support Spark’s M&E director who manages the rest of the impact team. This will allow the Research and Impact Director to keep their strategic focus and maintain and strengthen links with design and implementation teams. The M&E director manages the day to day operations related to monitoring and information systems, which are well regarded by partners such as the World Bank, government, and donors.
  
  

Research & Evaluation

• Lead the design and implementation of internal and external impact evaluations, in line with Spark’s priority learning questions, addressing internal and sector-wide evidence gaps and aligned with the organization's strategy and vision.
• Establish and sustain productive relationships with stakeholders (e.g. researchers, academics), allowing Spark to draw on and influence a range of advisers and partners.
• Ensure learnings and data are contributing to Spark’s organizational strategy & goals as we scale through partnerships.
• Develop partnerships to push Spark to continuously test new ways of measuring and further understanding our impact - and share these results with the sector.
• Map out existing research, network within the sector and gather learnings and evidence to inform Spark’s work toward supporting the CDD sector with programmatic standards.

REQUIREMENTS:

Qualifications, experience & skills:

• At least 15 years of relevant experience in designing and delivering high-quality research, M&E, and managing information systems;
• A PhD in Economics, Statistics, or related fields, and/or demonstrated equivalent experience in practical settings;
• Significant experience working in academic research settings;
• Must have authored and published at least 3 papers in relevant journals.
• Significant experience designing and running RCTs, including high comfort with power calculations, sampling strategies, statistics and data analysis;
• Ability to operate independently and strong in working as part of a larger team;
• Strong project management skills and attention to detail are required;
• Experience in strategy development is desirable;
• Excellent English written and oral communication;
• Remains calm and positive under pressure and in difficult situations;
• Experience working with academics, governments, and donor institutions;
• Experience working with the World Bank would be advantageous.

OTHER INFORMATION

Job Location: Flexible with preference for East Africa.

Estimated start date: TBD

Application closing Date: On a rolling basis; we reserve the right to close this recruitment at any time.

How to Apply: (job posting to come)

Please note that we are able to sponsor visa applications for this position.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Spark Microgrants provides equal employment and advancement opportunities to all individuals. Employment decisions at Spark are based on merit, qualifications, and abilities. Spark does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, gender identity, age, disability, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by the law. Spark will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities unless doing so would result in undue hardship to daily operations.