The full posting, as written
ABOUT SPARK MICROGRANTS Spark MicroGrants believes in a world where everyone lives with dignity and determines their own positive future. Spark has worked in 1000+ villages in 6 countries and has pioneered a community-driven development model in sub-Saharan Africa. Spark works with NGO and Government partners to scale the model’s adoption and impact on rural communities - on their own terms. Our model combines facilitated community meetings with a small, discretionary grant to catalyze local action and institution building. Read more about our Approach , Impact and Values on our website .
ABOUT THE INNOVATION TEAM The Innovation team works to channel more resources and decision-making to the village level by partnering with the World Bank and other multilateral institutions. Community-driven development (CDD) has a proven track record of delivering lasting change with communities in the lead and momentum for it is building.
Our work focuses on three mutually reinforcing areas: building a community of senior CDD champions across governments, development finance institutions, and major donors; partnering with the World Bank to support the effective design of community-led programs and the tools and standards behind them; and exploring new financing pathways, including a dedicated CDD fund.
Overview
Spark seeks a Senior Innovation Associate to partner closely with the Chief Innovation Officer and the Innovation team as we work to bring more resources and decision-making to the village level through partnerships with the World Bank and other multilateral institutions. The Senior Innovation Associate is a trusted, senior individual contributor to the Innovation team who owns significant areas of work and drives them independently. Think of the role as a Chief-of-Staff-style partner focused on sector building: framing new opportunities, owning the systems and relationships that keep the team ahead, and taking projects from idea to done with minimal oversight.
The role blends research, project management, and communication to increase the pace and quality of Spark’s work to bring more resources to the village level.
Who you are
You are a self-starter who owns outcomes and doesn’t wait for direction to figure out how to make a project or process better. You bring the rare combination of being highly organized, i.e. nothing drops, and genuinely curious: you like chasing down a question, learning something new, and turning it into something useful. You are a strong writer and a clear thinker who exercises sound judgment on ambiguous, high-stakes work, and you are comfortable representing the team’s thinking to senior partners. You do not want to do development as usual, and you care about expanding high-impact work through new modalities.
You are motivated to join at a crucial juncture in our growth, as we build the coalitions, evidence, and financing needed to make CDD the default approach in contexts where it works.
Responsibilities
The Senior…