Innovation Manager

 About Global Schools Forum  

Global Schools Forum (GSF) is a collaborative community, innovation accelerator, and partnership builder for non-state organisations working to improve education at scale for underserved children in low- and middle-income countries. 

Since our establishment in 2017, we’ve grown our community to 148 organisations spanning 64 countries, collectively running or supporting over 252,772 schools and centres and providing education to well over 22.4 million children. Our members are standalone schools; a diverse set of school networks working within or across countries; or organisations providing core support services to non-state schools. 

Our work currently covers three core areas:  

Growing a global, interconnected learning community. We are continuously expanding our community of mission-aligned, non-state organisations across Asia, Africa, and South America. We provide opportunities for our community of leaders to collaborate and learn from each other, as they confront shared operational and pedagogical challenges. Based on the needs and challenges of the community, we curate an annual programme of events and communities of practice.   
Testing promising approaches and diffusing evidence. We fund and support education entrepreneurs to develop, test and scale promising education approaches. We generate and share evidence on ‘what works’ in education and what makes organisations more effective.   

Partnering strategically to shape policy and scale solutions. We enable our community to engage in the strengthening of education systems by engaging in global policy processes, and with support in forging partnerships with other organisations, funders, and policymakers.   

Innovation at Global Schools Forum 

The Innovation portfolio at Global Schools Forum comprises four key strands of work:  

• The Impact at Scale Labs: Eighteen months of technical support and funding to organisations seeking to scale their education innovations 

• The Impact Accelerator: Nine-month technical support for scale  

• Innovative financing: Developing and testing new financing products to drive impact in education 

• Diffusion: Codifying and sharing actionable learning from across our portfolio to encourage the replication of successful scale strategies 

About the Impact at Scale Labs 

GSF launched the Impact at Scale Labs in 2021. The programme has had three calls for proposals focused on sourcing highly promising, locally-led innovations (two global calls and one national in Kenya). We have contracts in place to support 12 organisations aiming to reach an additional 100,000 children with their solutions for COVID-19 learning recovery, early childhood education and development, and foundational literacy and numeracy. By 2029, based on our current pipeline, we are poised to support 50 organisations reaching close to 500,000 children. The Impact at Scale Labs programme systematically sources, screens, contracts, funds, and supports mostly locally-led education innovations.  

The Labs include: 

• Grant Funding: selected organisations receive up to $200,000;  

• Tailored coaching and technical support: organisations receive 18 months of tailor-made support to test new pathways to scale and build a foundation for sustainability; 

• Evidence-building activities: organisations are supported to build appropriate mechanisms to collect data and evidence to support their decision-making; 

• Access to ecosystem partners: organisations actively engage with the global GSF member base and wider network to build partnerships for scale;  

• Wide platform of peers: organisations access a platform to share evidence and encourage replication of impactful solutions. 

About our Impact Accelerator work 

The Labs have enabled GSF to validate the assumption that strengthening the capacity of organisations in targeted areas such as defining a scale strategy, impact measurement, and fundraising have a significant effect on capability of organisations to scale. The Accelerator leverages the tools and resources developed through the Labs and also maintains its distinct value proposition, as follows:  

• Focus on building capabilities: In the Accelerator, the focus is on in-depth catalytic support to help accelerate funding and impact, over 9 months. Organisations do not receive grant funding from GSF as part of the Accelerator.  

• Flexible offer: In the Accelerator, the support will be customised to the broader needs of the organisation as identified in the diagnostic phase. This means the support could exclude the testing of a specific innovation if that does not emerge as a priority in the diagnostic phase.  

• Asynchronous support: The Accelerator will build out and test several in-depth online modules of support which future Accelerator cohorts can follow asynchronously, with on-demand support from the GSF team and external experts.  

About our Innovative Financing Work 

GSF, Kaizenvest, IDP Foundation and Varthana undertook a landscape assessment to assess the potential for lending to non-state education providers. The scoping work will result in a $50M+ blended finance fund, focused on improving holistic well-being of children, especially around improved health, education and climate resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the first phase investment of this Fund of $2M, IDP Foundation and GSF have launched the Incentives for Learning programme in Kenya alongside two local Kenyan financial partners. The program will test out how linking adding financial rewards linked to learning outcomes to loan products can drive improved outcomes for children. 

Diffusion 

Based on our learnings, GSF developed the Impact at Scale Toolkit, a library of in-depth scale tools and case studies organisations use to navigate their scale journeys. We have partnered with HundrED, Schools2030 and the Jacobs Foundation to create a user friendly mechanism to support the translation and uptake of scaling research for the education community. We also share learnings from our innovation work through targeted communities of practice, conferences, and meetings. 

Responsibilities 

We are recruiting an Innovation Manager to support the delivery of our innovation portfolio. This role will support the Innovation Senior Manager and wider innovation team. 

The key responsibilities of the Innovation Manager will include: 

1. Coordination and execution of the different phases of technical support for organisations, including: 

• Collaborating closely with the GSF team to identify suitable organisations for the Labs and the Impact Accelerator; 

• Onboarding and supporting organisations through the solution diagnostic to identify their challenges and needs to ultimately prepare an individualised programme journey; 

• Assisting in the selection and management of key consultants and an advisory committee for each participating organisation; 

• Supporting the planning and execution of an offsite for the participating organizations; 

• Portfolio managing organisations and collaborating with internal GSF teams and external consultants to support them to reach their milestones and unlock their funding tranches;  

• Efficiently coaching organisations, overseeing all aspects of their participation, such as programme design, MEL, partnerships, finance and fundraising; 

• Facilitating connections with the wider GSF community and network to support  scale-up of promising innovations;  

• Providing advice and support on finding the appropriate methodological means to evaluate their solutions, impact on beneficiaries, and potential scale pathways;  

• Supporting organisations to develop an evidence informed strategy for scale  

• Gathering data from organisations and develop various evidence and knowledge products and collaborate with internal GSF teams on diffusing evidence to the wider education community. 

• Work closely with the MEL team to ensure that reporting data is clear and usable for tracking organisations’ progress 

2. Diffusion 

• Supporting the GSF team to implement the diffusion plan to GSF members and the wider education community.  

Knowledge/experience   

• Good understanding of the K-12 education sector is required, preferably in LMIC contexts; 

• Extensive project management experience, with clear track record of delivery to timelines and pre-agreed results; 

• Ability to manage multiple external stakeholders independently, working with senior teams; 

• Practical experience coaching entrepreneurs to improve their strategy, finance, fundraising, partnership and evidence capabilities and holding them accountable to their milestones; 

• Skilled at simplifying complex ideas into easily understandable formats tailored to the audience i.e. practitioners, funders and policymakers.   

• Skilled at learning design to support sharing content and materials in an interactive format. 

Personal characteristics  

• Passion and motivation. You’ll be passionate about education and making a difference, with a strong work ethic and willingness to get stuck in.   

• Planning and organising. You have strong planning and time management skills with the ability to effectively manage multiple priorities and stakeholders.    

• Proactivity and solution orientation. You’ll be a self-starter, able to work independently and show initiative in identifying areas for improvement and implementing solutions.   

• Relationship management. You have excellent interpersonal skills and ability to build and maintain strong relationships. 

• Communication. You have excellent written and oral communication skills, and experience communicating effectively with a range of audiences in a range of formats. 

• Tech literacy. You are proficient in working with the Microsoft 365 suite and other platforms and tools that make remote work possible. You have excellent PowerPoint and excel skills    

• Attention-to-detail. You’ll be someone who prides yourself on getting the details right, with experience of managing high-volume workloads, without compromising on quality and accuracy.   

• Flexibility. You’ll be comfortable working in a young, fully remote organisation. You’ll be quick to adapt to changes in priorities and tasks.  You will be open to short-term international travel. 

• Collaborative team player. You value others’ ideas, skills, perspectives and contributions and work actively to share ideas and support with colleagues.  

• Commitment to continuous improvement. You are committed to actively developing and sharing your knowledge and skills, to seeking and applying feedback and to sharing feedback with others.    

• Honesty and transparency. You share information and updates in a clear and transparent way, when things are going to plan and when they aren’t.   

• Intentionally inclusive. You are committed to understanding, respecting and collaborating with colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds and experience levels.   

Our benefits include:  

• 35 fully flexible holiday days (including flexible bank holidays)  

• Flexible working - work from home or at a location that suits you and at the times that work best for you 

• Co-working space allowance  

• Personal learning and development budget  

• Access to GSF events  

• Access to Learning Platform iHasco  

• Annual team retreat  

• Employee pension scheme (only available to UK employees at present). 

Terms and Conditions 

Salary: Competitive within non-state education sector, adjusted based on location and experience. 

Contract: Two-year fixed term with expectation of extension. Consultancy agreements will be considered for candidates not based in the UK, where GSF is currently headquartered.  
Hours: Full Time, typically 9-5 in your time zone, but with significant flexibility. Given that we work across different time zones, some non-traditional hours for early or late calls may be required. 

Location: We are a fully remote organisation. We welcome applications from anywhere in the world, with a preference for a time zone between GMT-2 to GMT+5:30. Local work authorisation is required. Some international travel may be required. 
Anticipated Start Date:  As soon as possible, subject to any notice periods. 

Responsible to: Senior Innovation Manager  

How to Apply

Application deadline: 9am GMT, Monday 10th February 

In order to apply for this role, you will need to upload your CV and a cover letter detailing:  

• What excites you about GSF and this role in particular  
• Your achievements and experience as they relate to this job description   
• What you would do in this role to really make an impact  

Please note, we will not consider any applications unless they include a CV, cover letter and response to the points above, and/or if they have not been submitted through our Workable application portal.  

Recruitment Process:  

• Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by February 14th  and sent a written assessment to complete 

• First-round written assessment due on February 21st  

• First-round interviews w/o March 3rd  

• Final interviews will be held w/o March 10th  

If you apply, we will process your personal data for recruitment purposes only and in accordance with our Data Privacy Policy.   

GSF is committed to cultivating a fair and inclusive workplace, where everyone can be themselves and thrive. We welcome applications from everyone regardless of race, age, disability, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or faith.   

If this role isn't quite right for you but you like the idea of working at GSF, please submit your CV to  our talent pool and be the first to hear about new opportunities in future here: Global Schools Forum - Current Openings (workable.com)