Website Madhi Foundation

The Manager, Partnerships and Communication will be responsible to identify, nurture and expand Madhi’s ties with both state and donor partners. In addition to supporting the execution of a strong government relations strategy, they will also play an instrumental role in ensuring that the organisation’s funding target is met on time. They will also engage in purposeful and meaningful partnerships with other organisations in the sector. It is a role that provides an exciting opportunity to build purposeful collaboration across a wide range of stakeholders.

What we do

Madhi works closely with the Tamil Nadu School Education Department to conceptualise and implement large scale quality improvement programmes in Tamil Nadu’s government schools. Over the course of the next 5 years Madhi will strengthen its existing programmes in the state (as well as undertake new programmes) with the singular aim of ensuring transformative improvement in the quality of school education in Tamil Nadu. Madhi’s programmes in Tamil Nadu are consolidated under a single umbrella called Project: TN Soars, comprising 3 critical projects: 1. Ennum Ezhuthum (The Tamil Nadu state Foundational Learning Mission), 2. TechForEdSystems and 3. Tamil Nadu STEAM Model Schools.

Ennum Ezhuthum: We are currently also working as the ‘Chief Management Partner’ for Tamil Nadu’s official Foundational Learning Mission, The ‘Ennum Ezhuthum Mission’ – a Rs. 500 Cr Mission of national and regional importance aimed at universalising foundational learning for all children in Tamil Nadu’s 37,000 government schools.

Project MALA: Project MALA aims to create high-tech, low-tech and no-tech tools which can support child-educators (parents, teachers, volunteers) to build the neuro-linguistic exposure that children require to acquire language proficiency through oracy. Children in rural areas or from low income households have minimal exposure to the English language- particularly oracy. They find the existing english language learning tools inadequate to build fluency in spoken English and also have difficulty in reading to learn from English sources. Project MALA aims to leverage technology and contextually built learning resources to solve this problem.

Tamil Nadu STEAM Model Schools: To ensure holistic growth of children from underserved communities and to empower them with the skills to work toward their dreams, the Department of School Education has embarked on an ambitious project of setting up ‘Tamil Nadu Model Schools’ that will serve children from the most marginalized backgrounds and equip them with skills and knowledge such that their disadvantages get mitigated and no longer impede their success in academics, work and life. Madhi has joined the Department to assist in the setting up of these 38 Model Schools, each exemplifying the principles of equity and inclusion in letter and spirit, enabling every student, irrespective of their background, to receive equal opportunities to aspire and achieve their goals.

Your team (Scale and Innovations)

The Organizational Development (OD) team comprises Human Capital Management (HCM), Operations, Communications and Partnerships. The OD team consists of heroes who work hard in the shadows and believe that the show must go on, come rain or sunshine. The HCM team is in charge of managing human capital and talent at Madhi and strives to find passionate and committed individuals to join the team. The operations team ensures seamless functioning of the organization and oversees finance and administration-related activities.

About the role

The challenges you will help solve in this role:

Over the past 5 years, we have grown from a team of 5 to a team of 25 currently and are likely to grow exponentially, expanding our work with the State’s initiatives and grow to a team of 150 soon. This will require us to build a robust pipeline of donors for raising funds for enabling this growth. As the Associate Director, you will need to lead from the front to identify new donor bases and create innovative and exciting communication and proposals, and help Madhi fundraise
You will be expected to help balance the requirements of donors, internal requirements and steering Project Finance to walk the tightrope
Fundraising, as anyone who has raised funds would have you know, is about leveraging close and extended networks. While Madhi has built a strong network of supporters over the years, you will also be expected to draw from your own network and help direct support towards Madhi
Madhi’s projects are designed to suit the context of Tamil Nadu and the stakeholders we interact with. However, our digital presence and brand as a thought leader in the education sector is something that must expand far beyond our geographical bounds. You will be expected to discover and leverage all channels of communication that could showcase Madhi’s work to a larger audience
We are sticklers for high quality in writing, for sensitive and contextual tones of communication, and for designing visual collateral that speak volumes of our work. Through this role you will be expected to uphold these standards and contribute to the design of our brand image and communication guidelines

The job description:

Below is an indicative set of responsibilities you will be required to lead as part of your role. We believe that a job description is best created collaboratively where the individual joining the team and the senior leadership team together define the role in greater detail so it reflects your aspirations and ambitions as much as it does the organisation’s needs. A detailed description will be jointly created once the selection process has been completed and you have accepted our offer of employment.

In this role some of your responsibilities will include:

Support the CEO and your team, with vision setting for the vertical
Set and execute the vision for Madhi’s internal and external communication strategies to increase
Madhi’s brand visibility across various media: social, print, radio etc
Assist the CEO in consistently meeting Madhi’s defined fundraising targets
Carry out extensive research about potential partners that can work with Madhi synergistically
Build and maintain a strong network of donors & partners (funding, government, other organizations with whom synergies may exist) and strategically manage each relationship
Create periodic reports and presentations to present to donor groups
Create compelling grant applications to secure institutional grants
Refine thought leadership submissions by team members to build and maintain an active and meaningful blog site
Review and approve all collaterals to be shared with external stakeholders and ensure they conform to Madhi’s communication guidelines
Design audio-visual collaterals of varying lengths, catering to different audiences, to narrate Madhi’s story with conviction and humility
Maintain and update the Madhi website on an ongoing basis

You will thrive in this role if you:

Possess exceptional leadership skills and have managed a highly skilled team before
Have demonstrated the ability to build and maintain relationships with a wide array of people from diverse backgrounds (junior/senior, for-profit/non-profit etc.)
Have led social media campaigns for social sector organizations
Have developed marketing and public outreach collaterals (videos, posters) end to end for social sector organizations
Have a keen eye for detail and can produce technical proposals and official documents (like MoUs) of exceptional quality even with a short turnaround time
Possess strong written and verbal communication in English with excellent knowledge of MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Possess strong and proven influencing and negotiating skills targeted at a diverse range of audience
Have outstanding communication and interpersonal skills
Have proven planning skills and take pride in seeing projects through to completion
Are prolific on social media and understand what strategies work to drive traction online
Can proofread and edit formal as well as informal documents for internal and external dissemination
Can tap into your network and liaise with public relations officials, journalists etc.
Have an entrepreneurial mindset and enjoy solving problems
Have excellent presence on social media and have driven online campaigns for social sector organizations
Have minimum 2 years of experience with managing external stakeholders especially in the development sector
Have an interest and aptitude for design and the creation of visual collaterals
Have excellent editing and proofreading skills with an exceptional command over English to craft compelling narratives.
Have designed communication collaterals for firms before and knows what gains people attention
Are extremely detail-oriented and meticulous with formal written communication
Enjoy working with a diverse and highly skilled team
Truly believe in the power of collaboration over competition

Prerequisites include:

At least 4-6 years of work experience with minimum 2 years in the development sector
Experience of having worked with any grant making institutions or CSRs before (or) in corporate consulting in areas such as strategy, marketing etc
Knowledge of any of the content design softwares (Adobe suite)
A postgraduate degree in social sciences or mass communication
Directly managed at least a team of 1-2 members

This role will report to: CEO/ Associate Director, Partnerships
Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Remuneration: Rs 8 – 11 Lakhs p.a
Please note: You will be expected to bring your own laptop, with updated software (MS Office 2016)

For more information, please write to: apply@madhifoundation.org

To apply for this job please visit forms.gle.