We are looking for a VP Operations, People & Finance to set up and lead the internal culture, processes and systems of the Global Fund for a New Economy. This ambitious new organization will invest in the infrastructure of civil society across multiple geographies, issues, and contexts to drive change at scale towards a fairer, more inclusive, and more sustainable global political economy. This role is central to the successful establishment, growth, and impact of our organization. Using well-honed skills and judgment across people, operations, and finance, this key person will build and develop appropriate infrastructure, systems, and processes to support and sustain the Global Fund as it hires staff and begins grantmaking across multiple legal jurisdictions globally.
Your role will be critical to ensuring excellence across our people, systems, and internal culture. We want to be a great place to work with a strong Diversity, Equity and Inclusion anchor to our work, mindful of the sensitivities of working across multiple countries and cultures. Our ambitions are great: we need efficient and effective systems that empower our staff to achieve their work to the highest standard.
As the project develops, we are interested in exploring other forms of revenue generation, incubation and grant making structures to meet the Global Fund’s strategic goals. These functions will likely sit within an expanded operations team in future years that this role will lead on. The VP Operations, Finance & People will be a member of the senior management team and part of the wider organizational strategy development, working closely with and reporting directly to the co-President. They will work closely with a team and manage the Director of Finance and the Director of Operations.
Responsibilities
Develop and implement a pan-organizational strategy for establishing our internal operations, including HR, culture, IT, finance, compliance/legal, and governance based on the principles of excellence, integrity, and efficiency with a strong and cross-cutting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lens.
Hire and manage the operations, people, and finance team starting with 3-4 staff but growing steadily over time to meet the needs of a growing organization.
Advise the co-Presidents and the executive team on organizational prioritization, right-sizing, risk, and any areas for special focus and attention.
Deliver and manage a finance function that allows the organization to budget, manage, and report on its finances internally and to all relevant parties.
Determine, oversee, and sign off the Fund’s statutory and non-statutory reporting obligations in the US and globally, including tax and regulatory filings, management of the external audit and other audit processes and periodic or ad hoc reporting to the Fund’s donors including setting-up our ability to operate in new jurisdictions where relevant.
Oversee the Fund’s human resources function, including hiring and recruitment, staff development, compensation and benefits, performance management, and retention practices with an aim of delivering and sustaining excellence.
Anchor the Fund’s culture - designing a workplace that champions the values of equity, inclusion, and authenticity, embracing difference and supporting all. This should be combined with an approach which is pragmatic, and a willingness to address any cultural tensions or issues, whether at an individual and organizational level.
Sit on the senior leadership team of the Fund which oversees its strategy and day-to-day running.
Manage our IT systems to enable agile, efficient work between a growing team working across timezones and working patterns.
Set up and manage the Fund’s grant making procedures in line with emerging best practice and principles, including reporting and compliance, to satisfy the needs of our donors for accountability and our requirement for flexible, efficient and low overhead grant making.
Create, develop, and sustain habits, attitudes, tools and procedures to make the Fund a learning organization.
Person specification
Experience of leading and managing multi-functional operations teams, ideally operating across multiple countries and timezones.
Practical experience of working in a think tank, campaigning organization, philanthropy/donor organization, government (at a local or national level), NGO, or a relevant branch of academia- ideally, with an emphasis on organizational start-up and scale-up.
A demonstrated commitment to the Fund’s mission and a demonstrable appetite for learning about the field.
Ideally, significant experience of working in or with the Global South. Experience of working in one or more of our primary countries of interest (Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, Colombia, or India) would be highly desirable.
Ability to build strong relationships with fellow team members and to work collaboratively
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with language proficiency in English and at least one other language spoken in one of our priority countries.
A sense of humour and self-awareness.
Demonstrated ability to oversee a finance function at scale.
Proven commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion work.
Demonstrable work holding and upholding progressive organizational culture that can recognise and effectively explore and resolve conflict and tension.
Strategic and inspiring, with the ability to set a vision for a corporate function and to lead and manage others to deliver it.
The Global Fund for a New Economy was founded in early 2024 and is a fiscally sponsored project of the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation. The Fund’s mission is to build the strategic, resource, and institutional capacity for those working in concert to build a new political economy. This ‘New Economy movement’ is best understood as all those committed to envisioning and bringing into being a form of political economy that is fundamentally more inclusive, more sustainable, and which fosters democratic institutions and participation. The emphasis on inclusivity refers to the yawning economic inequality seen in the neoliberal era, both within societies and between them. It’s also a reference to other forms of inequality – gender and racial stratification are the most obvious examples – that operate in the political-economic sphere.
Inspired by the successes of the global climate movement, the Fund aims to define a clear vision and set of organizing principles, to communicate effectively with publics and elites alike, and elaborate a meaningful policy vision and agenda for change. This will be built on a pluralistic approach, in partnership with a wide array of organizations and actors: think tanks and labor unions, academic communities and media outlets, communications shops and grassroots membership organizations. The Fund will help build the infrastructure and connective tissue across geographies and cultures necessary to bring critical mass and momentum to a global social movement capable of bringing about far-reaching, positive change.
The Fund aims to scale up organizational capacity in a set of strategically chosen countries, prioritizing those that are most likely the pacesetters: larger economies or those which are symbolically powerful, comparatively open and democratic, and which are likely to be global or regional leaders or to form key components of a global coalition for a New Economy. This list is still in formation, but will likely include the United States, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, Kenya, and Germany and South Africa. Additional countries under consideration include Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia, and Poland, for example. The question in each country's context will be “What is the most impactful action or set of actions that can be taken to scale the organizational impact of the field, of the ecosystem, in this country?”. The answer will be developed principally by New Economy leaders in-country.
Bolstering the organizational strength of the sector depends on a concomitant growth in financial resources. It aims to achieve this by applying resource mobilization lessons from other fields, such as the climate field, which has effectively developed new modes of resource cultivation. The Fund will seek to magnify its impact by identifying high-leverage, high-potential opportunities. This will be achieved in part through geographic focus, but also by carefully choosing issues, methods, or frames, which will have an outsized impact on shaping the next form of political economy. The political economy of the green transition is the most obvious example.