Global Innovation Fund

Position Title/Short Description

Full Text of JOE Listing:

The Global Innovation Fund (www.globalinnovation.fund) is a $200m non-profit innovation fund headquartered in London.We invest in the development, testing and scaling of innovations targeted at improving the lives of world's poorest. The fund aims to support a portfolio of innovations that collectively open up opportunities and improve lives for hundreds of millions of people across the developing world.
Through our grants and risk capital, we support breakthrough solutions to global development challenges from social enterprises, for-profit firms, non-profit organisations, researchers, and government agencies.
The fund offers grants, loans (including convertible debt), and equity investments ranging from £30,000 to £10m to support a range of innovations with strong potential for social impact at a large scale. We define ‘innovation’ broadly to include new business models, policy practices, technologies, behavioural insights, or ways of delivering products and services that benefit the poor in developing countries. We support innovators at different phases of development, ranging from early start-up and pilot-testing to larger scale implementation.

Position Summary

You are a seasoned evaluation professional with experience linking strategy to measurement and measurement to strategy in a range of settings. You believe that traditional grant making can look and feel more like impact investing if we structure our metrics of success smartly, and can lead teams to develop ways to measure and monitor the progress of individual deals, portfolios, and the fund as a whole.You are creative, compelling, and effective at helping content experts and deal-makers structure grants and risk capital deals that align incentives between donors and their partners, help stakeholders understand and assess the value for money of their investments, and measure and monitor progress toward goals. As a senior leader at the fund and a member of the executive team, you work closely with the CEO and the board to articulate, use, and refine a results framework that measures our overall success.

Areas of responsibility will include:

● Serve as a primary thought leader within the fund for the measurement of our progress and the results framework we use to report results and refine our strategy.

● Steer technical staff to provide accessible, cogent assessments of the quality of research proposals, source excellent external technical assessments, and manage deals for GIF, notably when evidence generation and rigorous testing is required.

● Assess the evidence base of proposals seeking to take innovations through the transition to scale: The Global Innovation Fund is committed to supporting programs to transition to scale if they are based on rigorous evidence of impact, effectiveness, and cost effectiveness. You and your team serve as in-house experts and consultants to help deal teams make better decisions.

● Guide a team that: researches and reviews claims about evidence made by potential partners; generates analysis about where a strong evidence base exists; engages with external advisors to pressure test our views on these and related topics; develops evaluation plans and advises on appropriate methodologies for the innovators in GIF’s portfolio to measure the impact they are generating; and connects implementing organisations in the portfolio to world-class organisations that can help evaluate their work.

● Design creative, transparent contracts that align incentives, reward performance, and allow the Board of the fund to assess the value for money of our choices.

● Aggregate data to measure the impact and effectiveness of the portfolio and fund as a whole.



Experience and Skills Expectations

● Advanced degree with extensive experience at the intersection of the fields of monitoring and evaluation,
strategy, and global development
● Facility with the uses and potential of rigorous impact evaluation, qualitative methods
● Experience creating, refining and supporting the use of use of data, measurement plans, and results frameworks by leaders for decision-making in a range of global development settings
● Excellent communicator, with extraordinary problem-solving skills
● A personal commitment to the mission and theory of change of the Global Innovation Fund, including the role of
rigorous impact evaluation and innovation as a tool for progress
● Experience with program-related investments, impact investing, and the measurement of social and total benefit
when deploying risk capital
● International experience strongly preferred, as is the ability to thrive in a context of ambiguity and work at pace
● The highest integrity and stewardship of resources, broadly defined.
● A sense of humour