1 Program officer volunteer roles in Birmingham

HERVEG.05

We help women and youth farmers grow nutritious food, raise poultry, and increase income sustainably.

Donor Prospecting & Outreach Manager

HERVeg.05 puts productive assets in the hands of women and youth smallholder farmers in southern Tanzania. Farmers pay through debt-free mobile layaway, so there is no loan and no interest, and everything is delivered to the village by our village agents. We work across five regions with around 1,500 farmers, 70% of them women and youth, and we are growing to about 3,000. Our funding comes from grants, prizes, impact capital and revenue. We have already won the D-Prize, the MEDA Pitch Competition and the Adaptation & Resilience ClimAccelerator demo day. What we don’t have is a map of who else should be funding this, or anyone opening those conversations.

What you’ll do
Mapping (months 1 to 2)

• Build a prospect map across three groups:
  • Institutional funders: development agencies, multilaterals, challenge funds.
  • Corporates: CSR, foundation and innovation programmes, with priority to companies operating in Tanzania or East Africa.
  • Family offices and family foundations that make impact investments or give to for-profit social enterprises.
• Screen every prospect against four questions: Do they fund for-profit companies? Do they fund Tanzania or East Africa? Do they fund early-stage? Is there a thematic fit (women’s economic empowerment, smallholder agriculture, food security, climate adaptation, financial inclusion)?
• Check every entry against a primary source before it goes on the map: the funder’s own site, current call or latest annual report.
• Find the named person at each prospect: programme officer, CSR lead or family office principal.

Outreach (months 2 to 6)

• Draft tailored first approaches for the top-priority prospects, for founder review.
• Run follow-ups and track every conversation in a shared pipeline.
• Write a one-page brief on each prospect before any founder meeting: what they fund, what they have funded before, what to ask for.

Your first 90 days

• A verified prospect map of 40+ funders, ranked by fit and how easy they are to reach.
• 15+ tailored approaches drafted, with the top 10 sent.
• At least three live conversations opened.
• A pipeline tracker we keep using after you leave.

How we work
You prospect, research and open doors. Formal asks, proposals and any commitment on behalf of the company come from the founder. Approaches go out either from the founder’s account with your drafting, or from yours as an introduction that hands the conversation over.
You’re probably a great fit if you...

• Have experience in fundraising, business development, partnerships or impact investing.
• Can write a cold approach to a stranger and follow up three times without taking silence personally.
• Are strict about sources. A fund that closed two years ago should never reach the map.
• Can tell a grant-maker from an impact investor, and know why the difference matters.

Bonus points

• Knowledge of the East African philanthropy or impact-investing landscape.
• An existing network in development finance, corporate CSR or family philanthropy.
• Swahili or French or English.

The impact you’ll make
The next funder you find pays for the inputs, training and village delivery that put the next thousand women and youth farmers on a path to owning real assets. Every conversation you open is traceable, and the wins carry your name.

Minimum Hours per Week:

7-9 hours per week

Duration:

6+ months