Educate! is looking for a pro-active, flexible, and detail-oriented team player to join our high growth social enterprise at a pivotal moment. This dynamic, entry-level role offers a broad range of experience with our industry-leading African education organization. As External Relations Assistant, you will be an indispensable player in Educate!’s day to day activities. You will use a wide range of skills to execute essential operations functions supporting Educate!’s fundraising and communications efforts.

We need someone meticulous, driven to learn on his/her own, and happy to pitch in and support the team with a variety of projects big and small. We’re looking for a problem solver who works quickly, loves tackling new challenges, is reliable and trustworthy, and can think critically to develop creative solutions to challenges. This position is great for someone who wants to learn the ins and outs of a first-class, high-growth organization like Educate! – so this role is ideal for an ambitious individual excited about building a meaningful career in the nonprofit sector. The role provides crucial support to our passionate, overachieving teams in New York, Colorado, Uganda, and Rwanda as we expand to new countries, work to be the leaders in our field, and reach one million youth annually by 2024.

About Educate!

Educate! works to transform education in Africa to teach youth to solve poverty for themselves and their communities. Educate! provides youth with skills training in leadership, entrepreneurship, and workforce readiness along with mentorship to start real businesses at school. Our model is delivered through practically-trained teachers and youth mentors. Educate!’s goal is to make this practical, skills-based model part of national education systems.

In 2018, we’re working in 175 secondary schools in Rwanda and 700 schools in Uganda, reaching over 42,000 students intensively and 530,000 more broadly. Our model was proven to have massive impact in a randomized controlled trial. Graduates earned DOUBLE the income of a control group and had a 64% increase in business creation. Our graduates change their lives and their communities, such as Lillian Aero who employs over 100 AIDS-affected women.

Educate!’s team includes 200 staff and almost 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations such as the MasterCard Foundation, Big Bang Philanthropy, Mulago, Echoing Green, Ashoka, and Global Innovation Fund. Educate! won the 2015 WISE Awards, was highlighted by Bill Gates, was the focus of an Al Jazeera documentary, Forbes 30 under 30, and by The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative.

Educate!'s Vision for 2024 is to measurably impact 1 million students and reach 4 million students more broadly across Africa each year.

External Relations Assistant Performance Objectives

Manage core development processes and support fundraising team to enable Educate! to achieve funding goals (30%)

Educate! has experienced big growth year over year and our solid fundraising track record fuels this growth. We have a talented, high-performing fundraising team that punches above its weight. You’ll provide critical support to this team, as well as implement our prospecting process, acknowledge donors, and maintain our donor and partner database in Salesforce. You will:

• Manage donation and donor acknowledgement processes, including processing Educate!’s mail and monitoring online donation platforms.
• Refine, build, and support systems for maintaining donor and prospect information through Salesforce database.
• Discover new funding opportunities through prospect research, including preparing the Executive Director for prospect and donor meetings and executing our conference research process.
• Support grants management team in tracking proposals, reports, and funding decisions, and ensuring that all necessary documents are stored appropriately and follow-up is completed.

Support core communications processes to build Educate!’s brand and communicate our impact (20%)

Educate! is working to be the globally recognized leader in skills-based secondary education in Africa. We need someone to help create all print materials, draft content for internal and external communications, maintain our digital presence, support with ensuring brand consistency organization-wide, and think creatively to generate new communications ideas and strategies. You will:

• Support the creation and distribution of Educate!’s bi-monthly e-newsletter and bi-annual print materials. Help us maintain communications standards for other external materials and 1-pagers.
• Help manage Educate!’s website, blog, and social media accounts.
• Draft and copyedit content for internal and external communications.
• Support with implementing branding and messaging projects to ensure brand consistency across the organization.
• Support Educate!’s thought leadership efforts through researching, drafting, and disseminating blogs, articles, and other pieces; Support with coordination and planning of small conferences, panels, and learning events as needed.
• Manage Educate!’s mailing lists for e-newsletter and print mailings.

Execute essential operations and administrative functions (40%)

As Educate! scales, we need someone to run the essential behind the scenes operations and administrative processes that fuel our growth. Through this function you’ll get exposure to operations, finance, hiring, and project management for a high-growth, industry-leading international organization. You will:

• Perform procurement and purchasing for the organization’s US and Global teams, including preparing expense reports, managing travel arrangements, and disbursing service payments.
• Manage inbound inquiries to the organization and respond or direct them as appropriate.
• Work with financial management and audit firms to maintain necessary flow of information, reports, and documents.
• Provide support to human resources and talent teams, including supporting hiring processes, as needed.

Support the Educate! team (10%)

As a fast-growing organization you can expect a variety of tasks to be passed your way. We need someone who can skillfully and cheerfully field a variety of simple to complex projects as they come at you, give shape to nebulous requests, and find satisfaction in a support role.

Team support project examples include: grant writing and reporting, project managing an org-wide branding upgrade, policy research, development of organizational systems, assisting with preparation for meetings and special events, and other miscellaneous tasks.

Candidate Profile

• Ambitious and over-achieving, detail oriented with excellent critical thinking skills.
• Eagerness to learn and grow, ability to see how low-level projects contribute to the organization’s larger mission, and a general interest in learning about behind-the-scenes operations for an industry-leading international organization.
• A “get-it-done” attitude, grit in the face of adversity, and a team-player willing to support staff on both small and large projects.
• Exceptional trustworthiness, reliability, and good judgement to handle sensitive information and high priority tasks.
• Experience managing projects. No formal “project management” experience is necessary, but you should be comfortable planning and keeping on target a project with many moving pieces and involved stakeholders. Relevant experience could include planning an event, conducting research and writing a report, leading a group in accomplishing a shared goal, or anything else that took superb organization and time management skills, and perseverance to get things done.
• Comfort with learning new technology and software.
• BA or equivalent degree.
• Proficient in Microsoft Suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), and Google Suite (Drive, Calendar, etc.)
• Strong writing, research, and editing skills.
• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets—see What is Educate! About?

Terms

• This is an entry-level, full-time position based in the Boulder/Denver area.
• Salary is commensurate with experience.
• Benefits include a generous health insurance policy, 403(b) retirement savings account, and a generous leave policy, including an office-wide holiday the entire week before New Year’s Day.
• Educate!’s Colorado office is located in Louisville, CO (between Denver and Boulder). Our office policy includes flexibility for remote work a few days each week.
• Preferred start is April 2018, with flexibility for the right candidate.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until position is filled, but the priority application deadline is February 23, 2018.

Organization Details