Research and Advocacy Manager

Job Description

Research and Advocacy Manager
If you are a commercial professional with research experience, we can offer you the chance to passionately drive social and environmental changes at scale working within Shell Foundation (SF). SF is a UK-registered charity that creates and scales social enterprises to tackle global development challenges affecting people in low-income communities living on $2 to $10 day. This role offers the opportunity to apply a commercial focus to the energy challenge in the agricultural sector. www.shellfoundation.org

Where you fit in

You’ll be joining Shell Foundation (SF), an independent UK charity, established in 2000 with a positive mission to apply business thinking to major social and environmental issues linked to the energy sector. By working with strategic partners, SF acts like an investor, providing business support and sharing risk, alongside funding, to create valuable social impact and financial sustainability.

In partnership with the UK Department for International Development, SF has recently launched a new £30m programme, ‘Catalysing Agriculture by Scaling Energy Ecosystems’ (CASEE), to fast-track access to renewable energy services for smallholder farmers. The programme will support highly innovative enterprise solutions that can become financially independent and attract private investment to scale.

What’s the role?

As CASEE Research and Advocacy Manager you will deliver crucial evidence on how businesses in the sector can develop in ways that generate impact and attract private investment, and how policy-makers and investors can support the growth of this markets.

This exciting, strategic position will see you identifying research opportunities and capturing insights from the CASEE programme; to help investors and policy-makers address barriers to growth, mitigate risks and identify funding partnerships.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Work with SF’s team, investees and third-party research agencies to capture learning, identify research opportunities and validate evidence related to the partnership.
• Write, commission and contribute to a range of reports, whitepapers, feature articles and tools to articulate the drivers of effective agri-energy businesses and inform investor decisions (including enterprises, foundations, social investors, corporates, governments and NGOs).
• Support partners to conduct in-depth analysis of each business model on the SDGs.
• Build a knowledge base of global and regional trends, particularly on the emerging use of digital technologies to drive efficiency.
• Build a network of key decision-makers and influencers within the agri-energy sector – and catalyse support to enable high impact energy enterprises serving smallholder farmers to achieve scale and sustainability.

Nurturing key relationships will be a vital part of your work. You’ll use your strong communication skills to ensure you present research and insights in ways that a range of internal and external stakeholders will find easy to understand and action, from enterprises and social investors, to governments and NGOs.

What we need from you

We’re keen to hear from men and women that have commercial and analytical experience, with expertise for developing external partnerships and managing complex stakeholder relations. Demonstrable knowledge of venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship will be an advantage.

Along with a Bachelor’s degree, we need to see a track record of excellent strategic thinking, delivery and project management skills. Additionally, we will want to hear about published research and studies you have commissioned relating to social investment and the impact and outcomes of these. Beyond these key requirements, we’d expect to find as many of the following on your CV:

• An ability to distill clear messages from large volumes of complex information and to use these strategically to drive action.
• Proven knowledge of business to be able to make informed commercial investment and marketing decisions showing an ability to articulate key messages to a variety of audiences.
• A strong interest ideally backed up by some practical experience, of sustainable development and social investment issues. A knowledge of access to energy and agriculture will be a particular advantage.
• Existing networks with thought-leaders in sustainable development/social entrepreneurial communities will be an advantage.

Shell Foundation
Shell Foundation is an independent UK registered charity that catalyses enterprise-based solutions to global development challenges. We hold the core values of honesty, integrity, and respect for people as key to everything we do and place the highest possible value on the diversity of our people and our inclusive and flexible approach to supporting our team.

Interested?
Please apply via the ’Apply’ button.