The Opportunity:

Dovetail Impact Foundation is looking for an Investment Director, based in Africa, to cultivate and manage a strategic portfolio of international partners. We are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants must already have the legal right to live and work in an African country.

The Foundation

Dovetail fuels extraordinary organizations serving people in extreme poverty. Our partners are tackling poverty and injustice in some of the world’s most complex contexts with integrity, ingenuity, and scale. More information is available here.

Our role is to steward the resources entrusted to us by partnering with and serving those doing the hard, daily work of leading a nonprofit or social enterprise that profoundly impacts others. We cannot do our work without these partners, and our approach is one of humility and honor in walking alongside these partners. We are high-touch funders, aiming to work closely with our portfolio organizations to be as helpful as possible, providing the capital, capacity, and care necessary for them to thrive. We are a small, entrepreneurial team with the energy and expectations of a larger, high-functioning organization. We work fast and anticipate excellence because the people we serve deserve our very best.

Job Summary

The Investment Director will cultivate and manage a strategic portfolio of international partners. delivering rigorous diligence, sound investment judgment, and trusted accompaniment to help organizations scale their impact. 

Key Result Areas: TheInvestment Director will deliver the following key results:

Strategic, Values-driven International Portfolio Management

• Fill the portfolio with high-impact, venture-stage grant partners (and occasionally impact investments) where catalytic capital and partnership can accelerate disproportionate impact

• Manage a diversified portfolio of 25+ strategic grant partners with excellence and leverage Foundation resources to maximize impact 

• Deliver sound diligence and recommendations marked by incisive judgment and pattern recognition and aligned with our strategy and values

• Actively accompany partners with humility and excellence, providing value-added thought partnership to partners on their scale journey

• Deliver disciplined partnership exits with grace

Command of Partner Ecosystem. Working closely with the Knowledge & Learning Manager, 

• Develop deep pattern recognition across the Foundation’s focus areas — identifying emerging leaders, inflection points, and moments of system-level leverage

• Cultivate and deepen strategic peer-funder and expert relationships in your region for the benefit of our partners, including positioning for strategic funding growth

Effective Representation of the Foundation

• Serve as an effective external representative of the Foundation and our priorities in strategic gatherings of partners, peer funders, and broader funder coalitions

• Advance the reputation and influence of the Foundation in line with our values and objectives

This role is for you if you consistently demonstrate these attributes:

• Passion for leaders of early-stage organizations tackling extreme poverty

• Exceptional judgment and discernment 

• Trust-building executive-level communication

• High self-awareness with exceptional self-management

• Humble, curious, mission-driven 

• Culture builder 

• Capacity to manage complex relationships with poise and patience

• Earn and keep trust 

• Committed to continuous learning and improvement

• Sought after by others for advice and thought partnership in their important moments

• Capacity for excellent external representation of the Foundation in a way that furthers the Foundation’s reputation 

• “Inbox zero” person 

Travel::

• Expect to travel ~ 20% of the time, with 3-4 international trips per year.
  

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of relevant experience in growth-stage organizational leadership, venture philanthropy or social impact investing

• MBA or an advanced degree in a relevant field preferred

• Demonstrated strength in pattern recognition and incisive synthesis of disparate data and information

• Demonstrated experience making high-conviction decisions and judgments with often imperfect or incomplete information

• Demonstrated experience and capacity to analyze and interpret organizational financial statements and evaluate organizational efficiency, unit economics and cost structures.

• International experience and cross-cultural fluency required

• Strong preference for fluency in French speaking and writing

• Excellent computer skills, including the Google suite (Google Docs, Sheets, etc.), Excel, Powerpoint, Zoom, and CRM platforms

• Be a person of faith; Dovetail Impact Foundation is a non-sectarian Christian granting foundation that invests time, treasure, and talent in organizations that promote human flourishing regardless of race, religion, creed or any other status. Our full-time team members draw strength and unity from a common commitment to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the foundation asks applicants seeking to join us to:

  • Identify as a follower of Jesus, affirming the beliefs put forth in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds;

  • Be animated by the call to '‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37, 39)

  • Demonstrate their participation in and commitment to cultivating a broad and diverse community of all those contributing to the work of renewal in the world, regardless of their faith.