Monitoring, Evaluation, & Learning Manager
Full Time remote (Sub-Saharan Africa)
Position Overview:
The African Visionary Fund (AVFund) seeks an experienced Monitoring, Evaluation, & Learning (MEL) Manager to work with our team to document impact insights from our first three-year fund and lead the design and implementation of AVFund’s updated MEL framework for our new strategy launching in 2025. Our primary goal is to measure our progress towards 1) unlocking and driving more unrestricted, catalytic funding to African visionaries and 2) creating a more equitable funding ecosystem that allows African visionaries to thrive. We are seeking a MEL Manager who will centre our core values and design MEL approaches that align with our trust-based and equity-centered approach.
We believe that our impact as a funder lies in supporting our partners to achieve their visions and remain resilient amidst major challenges. We recognize that the true impact on the communities they serve is our partners’ achievement and innovative solutions, which we indirectly contribute to through financial and organizational support. Furthermore, AVFund uses our partners’ internal metrics and milestones to measure success instead of imposing our own. This practice stems from the value we place on trust and proximity since our partners are more deeply rooted in and familiar with the contexts and issues of the communities they serve.
The MEL Manager will be the impact & data hub of our team – helping to review and revise our existing MEL frameworks and tools, while also designing new frameworks and tools that enhance our overall breadth of impact data to illustrate all the various outcomes of our work. The MEL Manager will work to embed our values into our MEL processes and tools to ensure we work closely with our partners to understand their data, without prescribing an outside vision of what their impact should be. This is an exciting role for someone who loves the intersection of impact data and human-centered design, has a knack for making sense of a wide variety of data, and is excited to practice equitable evaluation in partnership with African-led organizations. If you’re eager to help reimagine the way philanthropy supports African visionaries, design innovative MEL methodologies, and work alongside a fun & passionate team with lots of opportunities for growth, we encourage you to apply!
What You’ll Do
Consolidate learning & impact insights from our first strategy
Design & build new MEL frameworks, tools, and systems for our 2024 & Beyond strategy
Lead implementation of MEL systems
Act as an impact & data hub across different teams
→ Support the Programs Team by providing data and insights to inform our grantmaking, portfolio services, and relationships management strategies
→ Support the Fundraising Team by providing data and insights for our grant applications and reporting
→ Work with our Communications Team to highlight our impact and our partners’ impact by sharing data and insights to inform social media and website content.
→ Boost our advocacy work by working alongside our Advocacy Team to provide data points and case studies aligned with our systems change strategy.
What We Are Looking For
Additional Information
The anticipated start date is 1st August 2024.
The ideal candidate is an African based in Sub-Saharan Africa with pre-existing work authorization. This is a full-time role (an average of 40 hours a week, reporting to the US-based Co-CEO). Working hours will be agreed on based on where the candidate lives.
We will agree on performance and learning objectives during a three-month probationary period. We are looking for candidates who are ready to make a long-term commitment.
About the African Visionary Fund
The African Visionary Fund (AVFund) is unleashing breakthrough impact by driving resources to high-impact African founders. Our belief is simple—when tackling challenges and improving lives on the continent, proximity matters. Despite their potential for impact, African-led organizations receive less than 5.2% of all US foundation giving across Africa and less than 0.4% of all international funding. We envision a world where African visionaries
are recognized and resourced by funders for their ability to accelerate progress and drive systems change on the
continent.
The AVFund got started in 2020 and we are entering an exciting moment of growth as we expand our funding partnerships and our portfolio of African changemakers, launch our philanthropic systems change strategy, and grow our team to help us deliver on our ambitious vision. We have a small but mighty team of 7 spread across 3 time zones and 4 countries. In the last three years we have raised close to $8M, committed over $4.5M in flexible multi-year funding to 25 African changemakers, been featured in the New York Times and The Guardian, and we are just getting started!
We believe deeply in our core values of Transformative Impact, Equity, Solidarity, Trust and Integrity, and Striving to Learn. We strive to take the path aligned to these values at every decision juncture, even if the less values-aligned path might be faster or easier. We are looking for team members who are passionate and dedicated to these values and who will continue to challenge us to live into them at every turn.