Finance and Legal Operations Manager

Be a core part of operations as we go from startup to scaleup.

Location: Remote (Europe/India time zone). We are unable to sponsor a visa for this role.

Application deadline: 24th September 2023.

Note: This position was formerly designated as the "Operations (finance, legal) and Fundraising Officer" role. If you have previously submitted an application for the Operations and Fundraising Office role, kindly refrain from reapplying. The role remains unchanged in terms of responsibilities, but the title has been updated to better align with the job duties.

Are you a systems thinker with high agency and excellent quantitative skills?
Are you an equally strong communicator?
Are you excited about delving into details and the opportunity to optimise systems and processes?
Are you excited by the idea of working in an environment of high uncertainty and ambiguity, with large opportunities for growth?
This role may be for you :)

About Suvita

Suvita is an impact-driven startup nonprofit focused on increasing the uptake of routine childhood immunisations in India. We run two evidence-based programmes to boost attendance at vaccination appointments:

Sending SMS reminders directly to new parents and caregivers, to help them remember when their child is due for a vaccination.
Identifying natural community influencers and supporting them to act as immunisation ambassadors.

In partnership with the state governments in Bihar and Maharashtra, we have enrolled 600,000 families for SMS reminders. In addition, we have engaged 4,500 volunteer immunisation ambassadors, who we expect will connect with over 150,000 additional families to encourage and support them during their child’s vaccination journey. We estimate that our programmes to date will enable around 13,000 additional children to become fully vaccinated, saving roughly 150-200 lives so far.

This is a great time to work at Suvita as we are embarking on an exciting phase of growth and moving from the start-up to the scale-up phase. Concretely, over the next year, we expect to scale our SMS reminders programme across all of Maharashtra state (10x growth), and additional districts in Bihar state (at least 3x growth). We plan to double the reach of our ambassadors programme and will also be scoping in four additional identified states across the country for future programme expansion. Over the next few years, our ambition is to scale both programmes across Suvita’s six target states which are home to 70% of India’s under-immunised children. We anticipate our plans and ambitions to require a dedicated team member to support and shape the operations function at Suvita.

About the role

We’re seeking a finance and legal operations generalist who will be responsible for delivering and strengthening Suvita’s finance and legal operations.

The role will be a mixture of:

maintaining core functions and improving existing systems (50%)
building new systems that don’t exist yet (50%).

You will encounter systems, programs, and initiatives that have been in place for a while - so you should be skilled at quickly onboarding and executing them, as well as identifying opportunities for further improvement that have the greatest impact. You will also encounter many novel tasks or problems for which we don’t yet have an established protocol - so you must be comfortable charting a course under uncertainty and bringing in your Bayesian mindset.

You will report to the Head of Finance, Legal and People Ops, and also coordinate regularly with the co-founder on fundraising-related financial activities. Your responsibilities will include supporting them in the areas below. In practice, this would imply doing the initial groundwork and then discussing the outputs with them for sign-off.

Finance and Legal (~50%)

Assist the Head of Operations with the following activities

Annual financial and legal compliance for our UK and Indian organizations including annual returns and audits.
Monthly accounts and management reports preparation.
Management of contracts and subscriptions.
Management of purchases, payments, and bookings.
GDPR/ data privacy-related compliance steps.

Research, and drafting of financial and legal policies such as expense reimbursement, equipment, travel policy, reserves policy, etc.,

Fundraising Operations (~35%)

Prospect
- Based on a robust understanding of Suvita’s programmes and value proposition, build and maintain Suvita’s grant tracker of potential funders and opportunities through regular research.
- Shortlist opportunities and Request for Proposals in consultation with the cofounder
- Regularly update Suvita’s pipeline tracker (which tracks the expected value of raised funds).
Coordinate the proposal development process
- Brainstorm with the cofounder ideas and approaches to requests for proposals.
- Build on the above discussions to write initial drafts of proposals.
- Organise proposal writing timelines to ensure there is a comfortable amount of time for feedback and review.
Track and Report on received funds
- Coordinate with the Head of Operations to ensure received funds are tagged to appropriate budget lines and track spending.
- Support communications and reporting to donors including setting up a system to ensure regular touch points.
Develop relevant communication materials
- In line with Suvita’s guidelines on communication, coordinate and support the drafting and organisation of a quarterly “friends of Suvita” update, biannual newsletter, and presentations and pitches to advisers, funders, and governments.

Organisation Operations (~15%)

Organise board meetings (coordinate with trustees and the leadership team to set the board meeting times and agenda, write notes and action points during the board meetings, and follow up as needed).
Coordinate with senior team members on updating organizational risks.
As needed, support the research and set up a project management system for internal communication and coordination among team members
Overall, understand the current state of systems and then critically think if the systems are needed and how they can be run with minimum friction.

Where this role might go?

The scope of the role will have the possibility to grow alongside Suvita’s scale, e.g. over time you will have the possibility of working with a growing team and managing more tasks and responsibilities. Based on your performance and preferences, and based on organisational needs, there may be a chance to either move into other areas of operations or to grow in responsibility within operations or fundraising at Suvita.

Why this role is awesome

You will be working in a mission-driven, impact-focused organisation with strong values and a thriving culture.
You will be working with a friendly, passionate, curious and supportive team.
This is a new role in a startup environment. You will have exposure to and say in a variety of activities, such as how we fundraise, communicate with our donors, run our board meetings, and manage our finances.
We are aiming for huge growth of our programmes and impact in the coming years, so there are plenty of opportunities for outsized personal impact and growth.

Whom we are looking for

We don’t have any hard requirements for the role in terms of education or experience. The ideal candidate will have many of the following characteristics:

Attitudes:

You share Suvita’s values.
High agency: You can find a way to get done what needs to be done, without waiting for conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances.
Detail-oriented, highly organised and meticulous planner: You make sure all the minor details are taken care of to have a smooth running system.
Obsess over continuous improvement: You constantly think about measuring and improving the quality of processes.
Flexible, enjoy a high task volume: You can juggle multiple items and know how to prioritise and switch between tasks.
Curious learner: New systems and processes intrigue you and you enjoy understanding their crux.
Dependable & conscientious: When you say something will be done, it will be done. You are able to work independently with minimal supervision.
Discreet: You know how to handle sensitive information.
Question the status quo: You don’t take inputs and instructions at face value, but get to the why and challenge assumptions. At the same time, you are humble and self-aware.

Skills:

Excellent problem-solving and quantitative skills
Systems mindset: You can step back and look at the big picture. You make adjustments today to accommodate changes coming tomorrow. You put in place processes that can work autonomously. You can spot opportunities to optimise processes.
Proactive: You are curious about the current state of systems, and proactive about identifying ways to improve them and taking relevant action
Data-driven decision maker: You are able to run data-driven experiments / take data-driven decisions, and quickly and effectively seek, absorb and process information for decision-making.
Excellent scientific writing skills: You are able to communicate effectively (precisely, thoroughly and compellingly) verbally and in writing, with a diverse range of people and audiences at different levels of understanding.
Excellent comprehension: You are able to deeply understand, summarise and respond to different styles of writing such as Call for proposals from different funders or Charity Commission guidelines
Excellent planning skills: You often anticipate potential hurdles or bottlenecks that others might miss when planning a task.
Research: You are excited about researching, testing and implementing organisational tools, systems and best practices and are comfortable with Bayesian thinking.
Quick learner: You are able to get up-to-speed on new tools and systems quickly.
Online tools and data manipulation: You are comfortable with gsuite tools - gsheets, docs, forms. You are comfortable with data manipulation via any tool/package such as VBA, SQL, Pandas, Tableau, Matlab, etc.

Knowledge:

You have an interest in and understanding of the international development nonprofit sector, particularly as it relates to global health programmes.

Nice to have but not required:

Previous experience in a similar role.
University degree.
Knowledge of Hindi or experience working with people in India.

Other details

Hours: Full-time.
Duration: Fixed two-year term with plans to make it long-term subject to performance and organisation plans and budgets.
Location: Remote. You are available to work in the Europe/India time zone. Please note that we are unable to sponsor visas for this position. You should have work authorization for the country where you plan to work from.
Pay: Competitive with other nonprofit salaries, and in line with the experience and responsibilities of the selected candidate.
Benefits include:
- 30 days’ paid holiday leave per year plus 12 days’ sick leave at full pay.
- Health insurance policy.
Reports to: Head of Finance, Legal and People Ops.
Application deadline: 11:59 PM IST, 24 September 2023 (Sunday).
Application timeline: The application process will consist of:
- An initial screening test (linked below).
- 2 written tests.
- A final interview round.

Our best guess is that we will send out the final offer letter within two months from the application close date.

If this all sounds exciting, please apply by following the below link.

Application form