THE OPPORTUNITY
Reporting to the Head, Partner Stewardship, the Partner will support the design, coordination, and execution of a comprehensive Partner Stewardship and Accompaniment Framework across the Foundation's portfolio. The role will serve as a key operational driver within the Partner Stewardship team, working across the pillars of the Partner Engagement Framework.
The Partner will play a critical role in translating the Partner Stewardship strategy into practical, day-to-day delivery; coordinating accompaniment activities, supporting the design and rollout of partner engagement initiatives, and ensuring consistency and quality across all partner touchpoints. The role will work closely with internal teams, including Program Teams (Countries & other Platforms), Impact, Evidence & Learning, Strategic Insights & Program Performance, Programming Excellence, and external stakeholders including the Foundation Partners and accompaniment/institutional strengthening partners.
THE ROLE
Partner Accompaniment Coordination
- Support the design and rollout of Partner Accompaniment, including the Partner opt-in and onboarding process, Partner capacity assessments, and Capacity Action Plans (CAPs).
- Coordinate the delivery of accompaniment activities across Partner archetypes, regions, and themes, ensuring alignment with the Foundation’s accompaniment principles and values.
- Maintain and regularly update the Marketplace Directory of vetted capacity accompaniment providers available to Partner
- Coordinate the provision, monitoring and tracking of all capacity enhancement activities by various teams at the Foundation, ensuring all providers are aligned with the Foundation’s engagement and accompaniment framework.
Partner Experience and Engagement
- Support the standardization of partner onboarding, engagement, and feedback processes to ensure a consistent and positive partner experience across the portfolio.
- Support the bi-annual Partner survey, coordinating data collection, analyzing feedback, and tracking the implementation of recommended actions.
- Monitor and help address partner experience incidents, escalating to the Head as required, and documenting learnings for continuous improvement.
- Maintain open communication with partners and support the gathering of feedback to build trust and improve partner experience over time.
Frameworks, Tools, and Systems
- Support the development and maintenance of guidelines, frameworks, tools, and processes that underpin Partner Stewardship and Accompaniment, including the Partner Resource Hub, Partner Connect, and other digital engagement on the Daraja Platform.
- Research and implement lean, smart, and agile processes to enhance clarity, efficiency, and creativity in partner stewardship and accompaniment delivery.
- Track, document, and leverage learnings to improve partner engagement, support allocation, and program outcomes on an ongoing basis.
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
- Support the monitoring and tracking of partner accompaniment outcomes across the portfolio, contributing to regular reporting to Foundation leadership.
- Support evidence generation, documentation of key learnings, and translation of insights into adaptive improvements to the accompaniment and overall Partner stewardship model.
- Promote a collaborative environment for partners to share knowledge, resources, and experiences to address common challenges and leverage learnings for improved performance
Internal Capability and Coordination
- Support the building of partner stewardship capabilities of Foundation staff, ensuring engagement is consistent and responsive to evolving partner needs.
- Coordinate cross-functional engagement with Program Teams, Impact, legal, Finance, Program Performance, and other enabling functions to ensure coherence in partner stewardship delivery.
- Contribute to the positioning of the Foundation as a thought leader in partner engagement and accompaniment by supporting development of knowledge products, knowledge sharing and institutional relationship management.
WHO YOU ARE
- University degree in development studies, business administration, social sciences, or a related field is required.
- Relevant certification in program management, organizational development is an advantage
- Minimum of Five (5) years of relevant experience in partner management, organisational development, capacity strengthening, or programme management, with demonstrated progression into roles of increasing complexity and responsibility.
- Demonstrated experience in designing and implementing capacity strengthening or accompaniment programmes across diverse organisational types including non-profit, private sector, academic, and public institutions.
- Experience working with and across African organisations and contexts, with a strong understanding of the diversity of the African development ecosystem.
- Experience in partnership management, process design, and stakeholder engagement across complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
- Familiarity with monitoring, evaluation, and learning frameworks and their application in partner accompaniment or programme quality contexts.
- Experience working across multiple geographies and cultural contexts, with the ability to adapt approaches to different organisational and regional realities – Added advantage.
Competencies:
- Highly organised with strong coordination and project management skills; able to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously without losing attention to detail.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; able to translate data and partner feedback into actionable improvements.
- Skilled communicator and influencer: Able to engage confidently at all levels, from Foundation leadership and senior external stakeholders to Partners and Accompaniment Partners on the ground. Equally comfortable producing clear written communications, facilitating complex conversations, and navigating sensitive situations with discretion and professionalism.
- Critical thinker with an agile mindset; comfortable navigating ambiguity and responding to change with professionalism.
- Strong partnership mindset; able to build trusted relationships with partners and align stakeholders across different roles toward common goals.
- Familiarity with Foundation processes and policies yet unafraid to innovate and improve them.
- Skilled at cross-functional coordination and collaboration across technical and operational teams.
- Results-driven with a pragmatic approach to decision-making and a strong eye for detail.
- Experience working in complex, fast-moving environments with multiple internal and external stakeholders.
- Influencing without authority that enables coordination across Accompaniment Partners, internal Foundation teams, and other stakeholders without direct line authority over any of them.
- Comfort with ambiguity and adaptive management
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite and digital collaboration platforms.
- Possess professional maturity, sensitivity with different cultures, and impeccable integrity that exemplify the Foundation’s values
- Demonstrate a commitment to Mastercard Foundation’s values and vision.
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THE OPPORTUNITY
Reporting to the Head, Programming Excellence, the role will lead and coordinate programming excellence across programs. The role will be responsible for driving efficiencies, effectiveness, and quality assurance of overall end-to-end programming processes and partner experience.
WAYS YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE
- Lead Foundation-wide programming processes, standards and capacity building strategies
- Coordinate with the various delivery platforms to support consistent quality in scaling of the Foundation’s programs to help generate dignified work for more young people.
- Oversee program management and implementation processes, policies, and guidelines (work in coordination/consultation with enabling functions to ensure enterprise cohesion)
- Manage the program implementation processes, policies, guidelines and standards ensuring quality, coherence and alignment of all program processes post final design and enhancement of IPIA to Programming for Impact
- Take ownership of guidelines, tools, processes, templates to ensure standardization in coordination and consultation with OE.
- Enhance & streamline programming processes, workflows, documents, tools and overall process turnaround time for positive partner experience
- Work with Program Finance to measure, monitor & track program processes for effectiveness and efficiencies
- Implement recommendations to enhance program processes
- Manage and govern revisions to all programmatic processes, policies, guidelines in coordination with core relevant cross functional departments.
- Monitor the implementation of program-wide processes, policies, guidelines and standards and d lead the development and implementation of changes to ensure continued coherence and alignment to the evolving programming needs.
- Identify and curate contents for the Program Academy to drive capability, effective onboard and learning within Programs Team
- Drive capability enhancement across Program teams through trainings, workshops & learning within the Program teams in coordination with P&C & Foundation Academy
- Work with P&C to embed program learning in programming processes
WHO YOU ARE
- University degree, preferably in business administration or a related field is required; Master's Degree will be advantageous.
- Program Management experience
- Minimum of Ten (10) years of experience driving program delivery
- Two (2) years leadership and management experience in a multi-country environment in Africa, with a preference for private sector experience.
- Experience in partnership management, process design & program management within nonprofit organizations, international NGO’s and/or learning institutions is also helpful.
Competencies:
- Mastery of Microsoft Office suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel).
- Strong coordination, project planning and program management skills.
- Advanced skills in process mapping and management
- Excellent organizational and prioritization skills; demonstrated attention to detail and ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously.
- Exposure to strategic systems thinking with an ability to understand and engage with stakeholders in different ecosystems and design programming that addresses root causes and critical needs.
- Substantive knowledge of key issues and emerging trends and barriers in youth and work across Africa.
- Excellent English written and spoken communication skills, proofreading skills with a high attention to detail.
- Strategic and critical thinker with strong Programmatic experience
- Strategy and planning experience.
- Skilled at cross-functional coordination and collaboration.
- Process improvement implementation experience.
- Familiarity with Foundation processes and policies yet unafraid to innovate and redefine them.
- Strong partnership mindset and able to align stakeholders across different roles toward common goals.
- Skilled communicator and influencer, from executive through to technical levels and external constituencies, know how to navigate ambiguous environments and are comfortable at managing up and beyond hierarchy.
- Excellent multi-stakeholder management skills with senior Foundation colleagues and senior levels of external stakeholders.
- Fosters a positive spirit of collaboration in a complex, and rapidly evolving environment.
- Results drive/orientation, an eye for detail and pragmatic decision maker.
- Possess professional maturity, sensitivity with different cultures, and impeccable integrity that exemplify the Foundation’s values.
- Demonstrate a commitment to Mastercard Foundation’s values and vision.
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