The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The FP&A team is responsible for optimizing portfolios to achieve foundation goals, engaging with partners and grantees, and identifying and analyzing grants to maximize foundation impact.

• Portfolio Management: Optimize finite resources across portfolios to achieve foundation goals using a fluid capital market approach to fund priorities.

• Partners and Grantees: Engage in coordinated strategic and business analysis across funders and institutions with shared strategic objectives and strengthen partners to improve their capacity to execute.

• Grants: Assess value for money, identify and mitigate risk, and provide financial analysis to maximize grant impact.

Your Role

Application Deadline: 8 May, 2024.

The Finance Manager role is responsible for providing business and financial analysis support to a division and program strategy teams (PSTs). This role partners with PSTs on grantee financial assessment and complex grant structuring, including financial due diligence, as well as building and managing key relationships within the Africa team. Other responsibilities include budgeting and financial planning, resource allocation, and supporting other foundation-wide priorities.

The Africa team works to enable the foundation’s ambitious goals of scaling evidence-based interventions that target a range of diseases and socio-economic conditions that are endemic across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The team performs its responsibility through direct country engagement to deploy interventions and delivery models, and building the partner architecture to replicate successful interventions and models across multiple countries.

The Finance Manager will work closely with other members of our growing Africa finance team and broader program team to implement their responsibilities. This role reports to the Program Chief Finance Officer.

What You'll Do

• Lead annual budgeting and financial planning processes, including partnering with Program Officers and the Strategy, Planning, and Management teams to translate business strategy into mid and long-range forecasts to produce detailed, dynamic 4-year budgets, as well as risk assessments and scenario modeling.

• Lead analysis and provide program leadership with strategic and financial information to support budget management, forecasting, and effective financial prioritization and decision-making through the foundation’s financial and strategic processes.

• Provide support, financial analysis, and business advice to program teams on a set of diverse and complex grants, driven by factors such as grant structure, organizational effectiveness of the partners, and more.

• Proactively support organizational assessments/due diligence of key grantees/partners, and partner with Program Officers to develop appropriate mitigating strategies to manage financial and organizational risks of partners and grants.

• Cultivate and manage key functional relationships and partnerships with internal collaborators.

• Lead forecast and portfolio allocation management for assigned PSTs, including the monitoring of actuals and forecasts to budget, with risk assessment and producing variance analysis.

• Create dynamic financial planning tools that support decision-making and communication with program leadership.

• Perform financial and risk analysis to support grant-making and management.

• Partner with programmatic teams to manage grant and contract spending.

• Identify operational and financial risks of executing against annual budgets and broader planning horizons.

• Lead financial analysis including creating dynamic financial plans, dashboards, and grants to streamline organizational capacity and discussing with finance leadership.

• Assess business plans and perform financial sustainability analysis of organizations and specific projects. Advise program teams on risk mitigation actions including grants to strengthen the organizational capacity of partners.

• Assess financial and organizational health of grantee organizations through financial statements review and discussions with counter-level partners and other finance staff.

• Drive data analyses to generate new insights on the grant portfolio, leading to improved allocation of resources.

• Structure grants to optimize cash disbursements in consideration of operational risks.

• Leverage tools and reports to plan and monitor workflow, forecast, and payout performance.

• Participate in cross-foundation efforts to develop tools and standard methodologies in support of effective grant-making, pipeline management, and operational excellence.

• Participate in complex transactions and special projects for teams with significant financial analysis components.

• Other duties as assigned.

Your Experience

You are a creative, thoughtful, and curious professional who has an excellent track record of achievement in roles of increasing responsibility. You should be prepared to work across a diverse set of disciplines, bridging a wide range of expertise, with a demonstrated ability to work with agility, and diplomacy in a dynamic environment. Additionally, we seek:

• Bachelor’s degree with 7 years of financial planning experience, or equivalent years of relevant experience.

• Strong analytical competence, especially in financial modeling, and grant structuring.

• Technical and complex financial knowledge.

• Knowledge of risk management and organizational due diligence.

• Robust analytical, quantitative, and modeling skills for a broad variety of transaction types.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills that are appropriately right-sized to relevant audiences.

• Communicates complex financial concepts to partners with a diverse set of backgrounds, including leadership, program staff, grantees, and other foundation operational resources.

• Strong synthesizing skills and ability to absorb and quickly distill significant amounts of information.

• Ability to read and analyze financial statements.

• Strong project management skills and ability to work on multiple projects – or support multiple teams – simultaneously.

• Strong relationship management skills with demonstrated success working with individuals at all levels of an organization.

• Skilled in group problem-solving and teamwork to resolve problems involving internal and external partners.

• Influences without formal authority and works with efficiency, diplomacy, and flexibility as part of a team with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds.

• Highest level of integrity and leadership by example, helping to set the tone for the organization and demonstrate an affinity for creating and enabling an inclusive culture.

• International finance experience/exposure preferred.

• French speaker preferred

• Advanced Excel skills and data visualization experience preferred.

• Demonstrates intellectual curiosity.

  Other Attributes

• This role will require the ability to travel up to 25 - 30% domestically and internationally.

• Fluency in English is required and French is nice to have.

• The preferred location for this role is Ethiopia. However, South Africa is also an option

• A sense of humor and a positive attitude is required.

• Self-motivated and have a passion for the mission of the foundation.

• Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/) works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Mark Suzman, under the direction of co-chairs Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates and the board of trustees.